


Dance With Me

by Silvergirl



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 12 chapters of decorous fluff and 1 of unrepentant smut, AU where John & Mary never married or had a daughter, Ballroom dance, Fanart by Bluebellofbakerstreet, Fanart by Khorazir, For God's sake John pick up the pace, M/M, Mary is gone, Met charity gala, POV John Watson, POV Sally Donovan, POV Sherlock Holmes, Sally Donovan & Sherlock Holmes Friendship, Sally Donovan Appreciation, Sally Donovan has unexpected talents, Sherlock loves to dance, Torch Songs, loads and loads of sentiment, set after TEH
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:14:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 28,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21938776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvergirl/pseuds/Silvergirl
Summary: Sherlock rescues Sally Donovan, and in turn she tries to help him get John to stop faffing about and get on with Johnlock.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 881
Kudos: 647
Collections: The Curious Case of Ole Twinkletoes





	1. I live in hope

**Author's Note:**

> CW: Chapter 1 contains a brief description of an unsuccessful rape attempt; Chapters 2 and 3 discuss it. The remaining chapters are free of the topic.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I straightened my hair with a citrus-scented product and gelled it, combing it back from my face. John looked startled, unsurprisingly, to see me in a silky black t-shirt two sizes too small, with skin-tight black leather pipestem trousers (not sure about those, but he looked frozen as he stared at them). Blue-green color on my eyelids, even a hint of glitter.
> 
> It was a little too easy, making John’s mouth water, and I relished it whenever I could justify doing it. Not too often. I didn’t want to destabilise things by making John face what he wasn’t yet ready to face. When he eventually was ready, I’d be here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic takes place in an AU where John and Mary never married or had a daughter. Yep, I took the easy way out this time.

I live in hope of the right case: a case that might give me a pretext to dance until dawn, night after night.

Very occasionally they do come along, cases that require undercover work at a bar, a nightclub, and once—memorably—at a dance studio. I’ve danced as a professional partner at a rather sclerotic country club, as a solitary hanger-on at a very trendy dance club. I’ve done erotic dancing, long before ever I felt much of an urge to do anything else erotic.

At the dance studio I was an instructor. That was easier than it sounds, since adults learning new things are so nervous that they notice nothing beyond the reassuring authority of feigned certainty. It’s all good, except for line dancing. One does have to... draw the line, I told John. He smiled tight-lipped in that way he does when he’s truly amused but trying not to encourage me.

He almost always tries not to encourage me. In fact he’s most rigid when I’ve let something slip, some expression or gesture that makes him feel threatened. I do try. It’s so good to have him home in Baker Street, after we had lost each other so many times, each of which seemed definitive. But we always found each other again.

I try not to make him feel pressured or uncomfortable in his own home; it’s enough that he’s here. But then I find myself looking at him, staring, smiling, and if he looks up then—the frown slides over his face, he shakes out the newspaper or his book, or he gets up to leave the room.

It was something of a guilty distraction, then, when Lestrade mentioned a series of sexual assault cases—acquaintance rape—in central London. The rapist was circulating through a roster of nauseatingly loud dance clubs, and although Lestrade hadn’t made any explicit request, I was sure he was hinting that I could check it out. Unofficially. I’d have to modify my usual appearance, but going out dancing sounded like exactly what I needed, and John needn’t come, as I knew he hated the whole thing.

I was to be a witness, not a target, as the victims who had been raped in that area over the past months were all women. Sadly, it was almost certain that not all had come forward, and the police had taken an appallingly long time to notice the recurrence of the pattern: a woman out alone for an evening in a dance club, given a drink by a seductive stranger, waking up the next morning in a strange place, clothing disarranged and—well, the whole horror of it.

Serial rapes. There are few crimes more repugnant, or that leave a grimmer aftermath for their victims to live through, to recover from. No one ever suggests a murder victim was asking for it, going along with it, responsible for it. No one _ever_ implies a murder victim wasn’t actually murdered at all (well, I am myself a rare exception to this rule). Yet for rape victims this is the usual sequence of events. The injustice of a second victimisation in these cases makes me coldly furious, and I welcomed the chance to forestall the first one.

Halfway through a warm September evening I went to my bedroom and chose clothing that would be both seductive and suitable for dancing. I straightened my hair with a citrus-scented product and gelled it, combing it back from my face. John looked startled, unsurprisingly, to see me in a silky black t-shirt two sizes too small, with skin-tight black leather pipestem trousers (not sure about those, but he looked frozen as he stared at them). Blue-green color on my eyelids, even a hint of glitter.

It was a little too easy, making John’s mouth water, and I relished it whenever I could justify doing it. Not too often. I didn’t want to destabilise things by making John face what he wasn’t yet ready to face. When he eventually _was_ ready, I’d be here.

He shook himself out of it and asked, inanely, “Going out, then?”

I cocked a brow at him. “ _Obviously_.”

This was one of those conversations where John doesn’t want to say things directly. What he meant was, “Where are you going, all got up like that?” He meant, “Do you have a date?” (Honestly. As if I _date_.) He meant, “Are you dressed like that for someone else?”

What he said was, “Um—will you be late?”

I put on a leather jacket he’s never seen, and decide, since he’s being disingenuous, that I will be too. “Yes,” I say airily, “might be dawn. I might see you as you’re heading off to work.”

“You don’t need ... backup?” He looks ill at ease. But he hates dance clubs, and John in places and situations he hates is not honestly much help.

“No, no, just going clubbing. Got something to get out of my system.”

John’s eyes nearly start from his head, and I have to turn away to conceal the smile. He doesn’t know what to think when I wrong-foot him like this. Well, he can spend the night wondering whom I’m dancing with and what we do when we stop dancing. He’s kept me in that miserable state of jealous uncertainty often enough.

“Night, John. See you tomorrow.” I take my leather gloves with me—it might be a bit too much leather, but he gave them to me, and I do like them. It adds a fillip to his jealousy, as well.

Downstairs the cab collects me as John watches from the window.

* * *

The doorman lets me in with a shuttered look. I’m presentable, I’m been here before (not as _Sherlock Holmes_ , of course), and he imagines I’ll be good partner material for the women, always more numerous on a weeknight than the men. God knows why. Not my area. But I don’t mind female partners, it gives me a chance to keep in practice with the strange flirting ritual that sometimes gets me what I need faster than interrogation.

I pair up with a muscular thirty-year-old nearly my height with blonde hair cut in a helmet style. John would like her. I like it that John doesn’t mind being with people taller than he is. Bodes well for me, after all, when John finally comes around to acknowledging what he wants.

This woman has a dreamy smile, for all she looks like a bruiser, and I check what she might be drinking. Our dance is rather suggestive, and she’s very good at looking more involved than she is, but I see the surveillance she’s keeping on a shorter, dark-haired, equally strongly built woman dancing with a willowy redhead. She leans close to me and says in my ear, “Gay.”

“You asking, or telling?” I reply.

“Telling.” Her mouth is close to my ear, but not flirtatiously so—which, given what she’s telling, is not surprising.

“Same.” We smile at each other and step back out to the dance floor, both determined to make someone jealous.

That’s when I spot Donovan.

God. Donovan. I didn’t know she had a life outside of work, now that she’d finally got shot of Anderson. And to my complete astonishment, I see that she can _move_. It’d always been obvious she did aerobic dance, fitness, Pilates, all that gym rot, but I hadn’t seen that she was an actual dancer. Well, there’s always something.

She’s controlled, electric, graceful in a way that her clunky uniform and the chip on her shoulder never let on. She’s in black too, a short, form-fitting dress with black ruffles on a skirt flaring out from hips to knee, expensive and rather sexy fishnet stockings in her high-heeled shoes.

She’s dancing with a pallid, lank-haired man built rather like me but a couple of inches shorter. He’s quite handsy, and every half-minute or so she executes one of a number of rather neat evasive strategies. As she floats away from him and into a tight half-spin, she catches sight of me and nods, frowning. Not happy to see me here, then.

I dance with another woman and two men. An hour passes, and it’s so hot I’m drinking sparkling water with ice (oh the horror), without having seen anyone either doctoring drinks or trying to escort a slightly limp date out the door. I start to think about giving up here for the night—there’s an able-bodied policewoman here, after all—when a song starts up that always makes me think of John.

While most things make me think of John in one way or another, this song is a blend of the morose and the optimistic. A brilliant melody, driving rhythm, hypnotic singer. Incredible instrumentals. I lose myself in it, dancing alone, drowning in the simple ache of the lyrics and the layered pain of the voice.

_Hold me like you never lost your patience,_

_Tell me that you love me more than hate me_

_all the time_

_and you’re still mine_

But something I've glimpsed out of my half-closed eyes pulls me out of the trance: finally, what I’ve come for. The man with the floppy blond hair is manhandling _Donovan_ to the door, and her legs are strangely coltish and uncoordinated. Strangely, because earlier she had no difficulty maneuvering in those shoes even in complicated dance patterns. Instantly the song’s forgotten.

Hanging back enough to draw no attention, I follow them out the side door into a narrow and rather malodorous alley. Donovan’s trying feebly to pull away but the blond man is tugging her to the brick wall, pushing her against it and at once his hands are all over her, as she pushes back weakly and her knees buckle.

We have DNA samples from the other victims. I can afford to interrupt this without ruining a future Crown case, and even if I couldn’t, it would be beyond me to watch a rape in progress and do nothing.

Before he knows I’m there I’ve stepped up behind him and bent his right arm backward at a brutal angle, jammed his face into the brick wall behind Donovan's right shoulder. She slides down the wall and onto her knees, and suddenly I'm so angry I could break his jaw.

“You’ve picked the wrong woman, you know. This one could take you down with one hand tied behind her back. But then, you knew that, so you made sure to tie both her hands and one foot—probably the only way you can overpower anyone. Coward.”

As I’m hectoring him, needling him, he’s writhing and cursing, trying to trip me with his right foot. Moron. I push his arm so far up his back that another half centimetre would dislocate his shoulder. I tell him so.

He stops struggling and starts lying.

“I wasn’t doing anything to her she didn’t want. She likes it like that. Takes the responsibility out of her hands, adds a bit of danger. She likes that.”

Well. I doubt that, but if it was true Donovan would hardly thank me for roughing up a regular boyfriend. So I lean past the squirming little worm and say loudly, “Sergeant Donovan. Is this true? Are you here for a bit of rough?”

That startles my captive. He hasn’t imagined a sergeant, that’s clear, whether police or military.

Donovan looks toward me but can’t focus, and looks as though she doesn’t understand what I’m saying. I decide that the Donovan I know would not be up for rough sex in a rank alley while nearly unconscious, not by a long shot. All long-ago and tasteless jibes about her knees aside.

I clip handcuffs on the man’s wrists—Nigel, or Stuart, or Derek, or some other generic name—and push him down on his knees so I can pull Sally up off of hers. Those beautiful stockings ruined, I thought. Shame.

Her head lolls and she finally catches my eye, muttering, “Holmes. You... here.”

She’s hanging off my arm, unable to support her own weight or find her balance. I’m embarrassed for her, and hope she won’t remember this the next morning, or it’ll bring back quite a lot of the tension that always used to characterise our interaction. And it would humiliate her. Needlessly. When The Woman had drugged me, Donovan had doubtless enjoyed seeing me incapacitated. I wasn’t enjoying this: she’d narrowly escaped being raped.

“Yes, Sally. All’s well. We’ll be taking you home.” With my left hand I text Lestrade. He might not come, but he’ll want to know.

* * *

In the event Lestrade does come, an overcoat thrown over his pyjamas, accompanied by the police. They take Donovan to hospital for blood tests, to see what the assailant drugged her with, and I go with Lestrade to give him the short version of the evening. He’ll still make me go in to give a statement the next morning, I know.

I give him a succinct summary of events, emphasising how unexpected the encounter with Donovan was.

“She’s quite a dancer, actually. I’d no idea. Head and shoulders above everyone else in the club.” In the turmoil I’d forgotten _how_ good, and am now remembering a rumba that impressed even me. Blondie could only try unsuccessfully to hold on, bobbing limply after her. I imagine how good she’d be with a decent partner.

Lestrade is impatient. “But does she know him? Or were they just dancing together and he decided to try it on? Do you think he knew she’s a copper?”

I snort. “Not a chance. No rapist so cowardly as to drug his victims would dream of hitting on a copper. He just got unlucky. Or she did.”

Lestrade looks at me sidelong and revises, “She got _lucky_ , as I see it. She could have woken up in hospital next to a rape kit if you hadn’t been there, keeping an eye. _Which_ I’m particularly grateful for, seeing as I never asked you to do it.”

I roll my eyes. “Coincidence. I just needed to get out and dance. John’s mooning about the flat taking forever to figure something out. Donovan would probably have pulled herself together and knocked the bastard out on her own. He doesn’t look as though he could crush a grape. She’s worth ten of him.”

Lestrade barks with laughter, but a few seconds later asks seriously, “Do you really think she’s worth ten of him? After—everything?”

I consider. “Yes. She’s teachable. She taught herself a great deal, while I was away. She’s far less eager to construct an easy solution than she used to be. Getting away from Anderson was the best thing that could have happened to her. He was holding her back, and she’s worth a dozen of _him_.”

We pull up at the hospital and I get out to find a cab back to Baker Street. Donovan would rather not be seen in this state, I imagine. And John might still be up, to tell the story to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Drawn to Stars_ , my Angstmobile fic, left me longing to write a simpler path to Johnlock. The amazing Podfixx's release of earlgreytea68's Letters series made me nostalgic for the period before Mary took over the plot, and the current form of "Dance With Me" is down to them. 
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558627
> 
> Sherlock dances on his own to LP's compelling "Lost on You."
> 
> I was inspired by BeautifulFic's "Midnight Blue Serenity" and verityburns's "First Night Out," as well as CeruleanDarkAngelis' "Half a Dozen Dances" and, especially, "Body Language." If you know these brilliant fics, you know exactly which mental images they stuck in my head. If you don't, lucky you: you have delight on your horizon!
> 
> Update: RadioBob214 made a playlist for this fic! I am so grateful: the prospect of learning how to do so made my heart flag within me. Thank you, RadioBob214!  
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/52b8rtP4dSIFcUAIHvIWcy?si=wKnD7ZnfQImkVHp_RIXMwg


	2. In the wee small hours of the morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’ve always loved talking to John in the dark. I could let my guard down, and so could he.

When I got in at 3:20 all the lights were out in the hallway and the flat. Well, not surprising after all, the man had to work. (Thought he had to, at any rate.) I could risk a quick shower without waking him, and I didn’t want to get into bed with sweat and smoke and hair gel on me. Once the water got properly hot it felt sublime, and I got out of the shower very reluctantly. I put on an old t-shirt, pyjama bottoms, and dressing gown, and went to sit for awhile. Thought I’d look up Donovan's assailant in NSY’s locked database.

But John wasn’t in bed, he was on the sofa. In a position that looked miserable. He was going to be sore in the morning, I was sure. I tugged at him gently to straighten out his neck, and nudged him off his bad shoulder. Another blanket warmed him up enough to relax, and I worked on his laptop in the dark.

I was lost in the attacker's unedifying criminal record when I felt the air in the sitting-room change. John’s breath shifted.

“Hey.” His voice was drowsy and contented. It sounded good when he said it, so I gave it a try.

“Hey.”

He chuckled, so apparently I didn’t say it quite right. “Been back long?”

“Hour or so. Eventful evening.” I’ve always loved talking to John in the dark. I could let my guard down, and so could he.

But I heard the tension in his voice: “Yeah? What happened?”

I waited a moment. Wondered whether he were jealous, or worried about my safety.

“Strangest thing. I went to that dance club I like in Soho—it’s changed its name a couple of times since you were there—and spotted Donovan, of all people. Dancing with an effete little git who couldn’t keep up with her. Couldn’t keep his hands off her, either. And damned if he didn’t drug her and manhandle her out of the club and into a side alley, to try to rape her.”

John sat bolt upright, as though there were a damsel in distress to rescue right there in the sitting room. “ _What?_ How did you know? What did you do?”

“Stand down, soldier. All’s well. I followed them out and when I was sure what he was up to, I threatened to break his shoulder for him and called the police. It felt _very_ good to brutalise him in the name of chivalry.”

Bravado. It hadn’t felt good at all, I’d felt sick with disgust at the little worm. Hatred, even.

“Oh, well done, you. Donovan none the worse?” He lay back down, pulling the blankets up again.

“Well, she was more or less unconscious on her way to hospital for a checkup, but she hadn’t been harmed.”

When John didn’t answer I looked up, to see him looking at me with a very strange expression on what I could see of his face. “What?”

He didn’t answer. Then he said, “Come here.”

I sighed, set the laptop on the floor in a vertical V, unfolded my crossed legs and walked over to the sofa. I looked quizzically down at John.

“Well?”

He put his right hand out from under the blankets and took mine. His fingers played over my knuckles and the back of my hand, raising gooseflesh over every inch of my body under the thin dressing-gown. After a moment he stopped and said, without looking at me, “That was good. I’m proud of you.”

I smiled. That’s an accolade I don’t often get from John. Well, ever.

“Why?”

“You know why.” His voice was somber, and he wasn’t letting go of my left hand.

“I don’t hold a grudge against Donovan. She was misled by the best, just as I was.”

“That’s why I’m proud of you. You’ve properly forgiven. I haven’t.” He still had my hand in his, so I started very tentatively to stroke back. It felt _fantastic_ , standing there in the dark, holding John’s hand and caressing it. He pulled me down, though, until I was sitting on the coffee table.

“Why were you there?”

Ah. Tricky ground. If I admitted I had some idea the Rohypnol rapist might be there, he'd flay me alive for not taking him. If I didn’t, I had to explain why I needed to get out and dance. Better the latter, overall.

“Just had to get out. It’s one of the better dance clubs in London, for the variety of music. The dancers are less appalling than most places, and the volume is _almost_ bearable. You should come.”

That was a long shot, I knew. John doesn’t really like to go dancing, though he's actually not bad at it.

“Why?”

“Why should you come? You like—”

But he tugged at my hand, annoyed.

“Why did you have to get out?”

I smiled in the dark, again. “Because you’re thinking something through, and it appears to be taking a ridiculously long time. Watching you do it was driving me mad. Honestly, John.”

He didn’t answer. In fact, I felt him close up. Perhaps it was the word “honestly.”

Still holding my hand, he said, “Your hair.”

 _That_ was unexpected. “What?”

“Your hair. For the record, I hate it like that.”

Ah. Straightened and slicked back.

“Yes, well. So do I, or I’d do it more often.” The jokiness might distract him.

Or not. “So why did you?” Oh, neatly done, John—I didn’t even see it coming. That’s what comes of getting distracted by an unexpected caress, and of underestimating your partner. Now I almost had to admit I was downplaying my usual appearance for a case.

“Oh, it’s easier for dancing.” Saved by a last-minute inspiration.

“No, it isn’t. If it was, you’d have done it before, and you never have. And that get-up, with the leather trousers and the makeup. Why tonight?” His voice was deliberately calm, but he wasn’t going to back down.

“No reason. A whim. I don’t always want to _be_ _Sherlock Holmes_ , you know.”

Well, _that_ came out of nowhere. I had no idea that was even in my subconscious, let alone on the tip of my tongue.

“Hm. I imagine anonymity can be nice sometimes, for most people. But I don’t believe you. I think you knew something was up, there, or thought it might be.” He didn’t sound angry, though.

“Perhaps. I’d heard something down at NSY, and when I saw Donovan there, I thought she was undercover. Lestrade says not, though. It was sheer luck.”

“I wish you’d take me next time you go out hunting like that. No harm done, and I suppose I’d have whinged if you’d asked me. But at least give me the chance to decide.” His hand left my palm and moved up my wrist. I wondered if he were checking my pulse.

“Will do. And now I’m for bed. You?” _Oh._ I cursed myself. It sounded as though I were inviting him along.

“Sure. I can still get a couple of hours' sleep before work. But I’ll stay here, it’s warm.” I let out my breath. John was so used to papering over awkward moments in a conversation, he didn’t even miss a beat.

I thought without enthusiasm about the cold sheets in my cold room, and stood. John said, deliberately, “Of course, I could budge up.”

He didn’t have to ask me twice. I lifted the blankets and stretched out on my left side as John put himself flush with the sofa back, making as much room as he could for the pair of us.

It was warm in the little cocoon of the blanketed sofa: John’s body heat was pouring through the thin silk of my dressing-gown, and I was drowning in sensation. And sentiment. I couldn’t talk, just let John bundle us up together until I was no longer in danger of falling off the edge of the sofa. Just off the edge of the world.

* * *

John fell asleep before I did, because I never did fall asleep. He’d surprised me, inviting me to join him on the sofa, and he might have surprised himself: there was a good chance it might not be repeated. Oh, it _might_ be an escalation, but then again it might be an anomaly. He might regret it in the morning and I might never have the chance to be here again, feel all this again.

So I lay utterly still and registered, revelled, catalogued. Within minutes John’s breath on the back of my neck had slowed, evened out, but it still thrilled every nerve cell in my body. His right arm was draped over my waist, his hand tucked under my rib cage a bit. He must have felt my heart racing. His knees were tucked in behind mine, and occasionally I moved my feet against his, fishing for additional warmth. Once I heard what I thought was a chuckle, but it wasn’t repeated.

A couple of hours ticked over in pre-dawn quiet, and just before seven I started to wake John gently. No point having the electronic pips jolt him into wakefulness. I’d do what I could to make it a pleasant experience.

Showing some tact, and some expediency, I slipped out of bed and went into the bathroom. Presentable again, I turned on the kettle and started some coffee for me and tea for John. A cloud of milk in the mug and I set it down on the coffee table, brushing John’s shoulder and hair with my hand.

“Time to get up. It’s 7:12.”

A little stretching grunting noise, and John’s nose appeared above the blanket, his eyes still squeezed shut. My chest registered an odd sort of lurch.

“Thanks.” His voice was neutral. No, worse. Distant. Damn. I’d wanted to be wrong about that, but it appeared he did have morning-after regrets.

I wanted to stalk out of the room and monopolise the shower for 45 minutes so he couldn’t get to work on time. I wanted to fling out of the flat and clatter down the stairs and cover my ears so I couldn’t hear John taking his distance with that carefully cool voice. Instead I went into my bedroom and closed the door, thinking about what armour to wear for what was now certain to be an utterly hateful day.

When I came out, still ruffled but wearing my most off-putting suit and my most composed mask, John was showered and dressed, eating toast and reading the newspaper.

He looked at me sideways twice, no, three times. He was taking _my_ temperature. Well. Perhaps he was chilly because I got up, perhaps I didn’t sound particularly fond when I woke him (though I certainly felt it). We might be at an impasse, unless one of us softened. Took a chance, tipped his heart.

“Thanks for the tea,” he said, still neutrally.

“You’re welcome. Thanks for the hospitality.” I made my tone amused, but low. John gave the kind of start that pitch almost always provokes.

“No problem. Didn’t keep me from sleeping.” Hmm. Does that mean he knew it had kept _me_ from sleeping? I’d been motionless. My heart rate? But he was asleep—enough speculating.

“I was awake, but resting. It felt good to be warm.” There.

But John looked up at the clock, gathered his things and went to the door without saying anything of consequence. Disappointing. Not surprising, though; John’s m.o. is one step forward, three back. It might take us months to get anywhere near as close as we were last night.

Why, I wondered for perhaps the thousandth time, did I have to fall in love with a man who wants to think he’s straight?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fxFq51o_xY  
> for a beautiful version of "In the wee small hours of the morning" by Ella Fitzgerald


	3. Dance with me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If I’d had my phone out I’d have taken a photo: Donovan actually smiled. A wide, rueful, confidential smile that was the reward of my candour. I’ll have to tell John. Sometimes I can make a connection by being honest, where he would have advised me to be tactful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm glad if you're enjoying the lower angst-level of this goofy fic--thanks for all the lovely comments.

The day dragged excruciatingly, like slogging through treacle. I couldn’t concentrate enough to start a new experiment, and there was nothing case-related to take my mind off the bizarre case of John. I knew he loved me. He knew it, too. But waiting outside his closet door for him to figure out that he wouldn’t explode if he walked out of it—that was getting me absolutely nowhere.

At this rate I’d be whitehaired and wrinkled before John made a move. So if a move was to be made, it was for me to make it. The problem was, he spooked and jumped back every time _either_ of us advanced even an inch.

Around tea time, while I was sulking in the kitchen, a text arrived. Short, from an unknown number.

_— About last night. Thanks. I owe you. SD_

_— Not at all. Glad to help. SH_

A pause. Was that it? I didn’t expect a floral delivery, but as rescues go it _was_ pretty spectacular, if only for the timing. Oh, well. From Donovan that was probably a flowery thank-you.

Or not; the phone pinged again.

_— I’d like to thank you in person. Next week, maybe, when I’m back at work. SD_

_— Truly, no need. SH_

_— Please. There is a need. Mine. SD_

Fair enough. It would be ungracious to refuse.

_— Next week, then. SH_

_— I’ll text. SD_

_— Someone looking in on you? SH_

_— I could ask John to stop by. SH_

A pause, while Donovan doubtless pondered which of us she’d dread seeing least. John has never regained his casual friendliness around her. And me—well, I’m me.

_— Got a friend in. Thanks, though. SD_

I didn’t answer. It was a relief. I’m not the nurturing sort, and John, for all he asked after her, wouldn’t cross the street for Donovan. Not anymore.

Before evening came I ordered take-out, texted John to pick it up on his way home, and cleared some space on the table to eat it. No candle. Shame. One day I was going to light one with every dinner. Not for romance—for the privacy it creates. A circle of light, more encircling than sunlight, more restful than lamplight. One day.

The evening passed unremarkably, and I tried to remember that for two and a half years an evening spent unremarkably with John had been the height of my ambitions. Or nearly.

* * *

Donovan texted again a week later, and as I was actually on my way to NSY, we met in a coffee shop nearby. She looked the same as always, bar the trace of a bruise on her cheek.

There was no small talk; there never is, between two people who don’t particularly like each other and are quite open about it. It’s when people are shamming that they have to fill any silence with chatter.

We ordered our coffees and went to sit at a too-small table in the only quiet corner in the place.

She looked up when the coffees arrived and then looked at me. “Thank you for what you did. The D.I. tells me I was seconds away from being raped.”

I paused, to let her finish if she had more to say. John taught me that. I get more information that way than people intend to give. I don’t think it’s why he taught me to do it, but it’s been very useful nonetheless. But no, she was finished.

“You’re welcome. I’m glad I was there—I’d considered two other clubs.”

“What I’m trying to say is, what you did was kinder than I deserve.”

“No, actually. No one deserves what he was about to do.”

I kept my voice aloof, as Donovan seemed more tense than I’d ever seen her one-on-one.

I added, still neutrally, “And I don’t resent you, you know. What happened in 2011—it wasn’t your fault. We were both of us manipulated, by a master.”

She could tell what I was doing, and gave a small smile and tight nod to dismiss the subject before it could generate any more emotional intensity.

“Well, he’s going down, anyway. Fingerprints on the glass, your testimony, the drug in his pocket and in my bloodstream. The D.I. says they should be able to get him on at least some of the others, too.” She was back to staring down at her coffee.

“Shall we just—” She broke in before I could propose putting it behind us.

“I wanted to say. The guv told me something you said to him about me, something really decent. D’you really think that?” She looked up now, and held my eye.

“I wouldn’t have said it otherwise.” But she wasn’t letting me off with six words. Her stare was drilling a hole in my forehead. I reached for something else.

“We’ve had our differences. I found you very limited when we met, aiming dangerously low. You found me freakish and arrogant and mentally unbalanced. We’ve both learned something since then, I hope.”

If I’d had my phone out I’d have taken a photo: Donovan actually smiled. A wide, rueful, confidential smile that was the reward of my candour. I’ll have to tell John. Sometimes I can make a connection by being honest, where he would have advised me to be tactful. For a moment she was comfortable.

“Well, you’re still arrogant.” But it was a backhanded compliment: she felt on firm enough ground to tease.

“And you, Sergeant, are an extraordinary ... dancer. I never knew.”

“Pot, kettle. I never knew either. We actually have something in common.”

I put on an expression of theatrical horror that made her smile again. She didn’t know, of course, that I was positioning her to be of use.

“Holmes. If there’s something—anything—I can do to help you out sometime, you only have to let me know. I do owe you.” She looked steady now, confident. She’d said what she wanted to say.

“There is something.” A small jolt of surprise: she probably thought it would take me at least some time to come up with something she could do for me.

“What?” She looked both wary and game. It was Donovan’s best face yet. I was surprised to find myself pleased that she was back to her old self again after this conversation, which couldn’t have been an easy one for her.

She was waiting to hear what I was going to ask her to do for me, so I didn’t drag it out:

“Dance with me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from any of the fifty songs Lyrics.com assures me contain the phrase "dance with me." 
> 
> Do tell me in the comments which song you thought of--that would make me _so so happy_!


	4. While they dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I knew everything I needed to know about Sherlock Holmes from the first time I met him. He was weird. He was arrogant. He knew too much about crimes to be innocent of them. His mannerisms were creepy and his manners were insulting; he couldn’t hide his contempt for everybody around him. If I hated him, he’d given me good reason: implied I was only on the force at all as a diversity hire, double points for being black _and_ female.

You know when you have to admit you’ve been wrong about pretty much everything you thought about someone? It isn’t actually that easy. If your opinions are strong enough, you literally can’t see some of the information that contradicts or even modifies them. Plus it’s way harder to have to reality check negative feelings than positive ones.

I knew everything I needed to know about Sherlock Holmes from the first time I met him. He was weird. He was arrogant. He knew too much about crimes to be innocent of them. His mannerisms were creepy and his manners were insulting; he couldn’t hide his contempt for everybody around him. If I hated him, he’d given me good reason: implied I was only on the force at all as a diversity hire, double points for being black _and_ female.

So when he turned up at a crime scene with a sidekick who was looking at him like he hung the moon—I took the chance to smear Holmes the way he was always smearing me. In return he gave me even better reason to hate him: called me out in public about an affair I’m not proud I ever got into, and made sure even my boss knew about it.

As much as I hated him I never meant to drive him to suicide, or to be any part of the reason that he killed himself. I felt like shit about it for years. But then it turned out he never _had_ killed himself, which made me feel a lot better about despising him and a whole lot more motivated to start doing it again. He didn’t even care that his little sidekick mourned, did he. I never apologised, and never wanted to.

So that's where I was with my opinion of Sherlock Holmes. I’d have called it my knowledge of him. He was an enemy, plain and simple.

Until our paths crossed one night at a London club, and he came to my rescue. Plus he said something really decent about me, even though I couldn’t take it in at the time, in the state I was in. And he followed up on how I was afterwards, and even met with me to let me thank him (and shit, I really did _not_ want to have to thank him). And then he asked me a favour.

Okay, having someone you hate _do_ you a favour—a life-saving favour—isn’t much fun. You’d rather be indebted to anyone else. But when someone you hate _asks_ you a favour, it has the opposite effect. It makes you hate them less, to do something for them.

* * *

Dance was always my thing. I was naturally good at it, so I worked hard at it because I got results miles better than my peers. All kinds of dance—tap, ballet, ballroom, hip hop, interpretive, it was all good. Well, maybe not folk dances. Though that was less about the dances than the people who did them. Nothing spontaneous or creative; they were all self-conscious purists, always anxious about whether things were “authentic.” Or so it seemed to me.

There was a time I thought I’d get somewhere with dance, despite not coming from a posh enough background. I didn’t hit a glass ceiling, though: I hit a glass building. Broke an ankle, pretty badly, in a motorcycle accident, riding with a boy who’d been drinking.

By the time I was done with rehab a full year later, I could still look good on a dance floor, but I couldn’t do any of the jumps or landings that professional dance requires. So I packed those dreams away and started looking for a job where I could make a difference. A career counselor suggested teaching, nursing, or the police. Easy choice: I don’t much like kids and I _really_ don’t like sickrooms.

I didn’t make a big deal about it; it was what it was. Sometimes I went out dancing, mostly just on dates; I didn’t make much of an effort to stay in practice or anything. Until one day Sherlock Holmes, of all people, asked me to.

* * *

It was kind of surprising, why he wanted me to dance at all. He was working on a weird scheme—well, of course it was weird, it was Holmes, after all. He wanted to change up the annual Met gala and make it a kind of fundraiser dance to benefit kids whose parents on the force had died in the line of duty. Something I _really_ would never have seen coming from someone as arrogant and cynical as him.

It sounded risky to me. Not _dangerous_ risky. Nobody ever got killed on a dance floor full of coppers, far as I know. Risky for ... things that, as I came to know him, I learned were what really scared him. Public failure, for example. Ridicule. Letting people down. There were a dozen ways for a fundraiser dance to be a horrible flop, I thought, especially if it was organised by someone whose social skills were already so ... uneven. Well. Disastrous.

But as he talked through his thinking, I realised he had really foreseen most of the potential problems, and had kind of pre-solved them, if he could get the right help. Which was where I came in. I was what he needed: a flashy partner who could deliver a show-starting display that would make everyone else relax about their own dancing.

“Mightn’t it have the opposite effect?” I tried to argue.

“Not for most people. You’ve done more work than I have with professionals, but I’ve done more with amateurs or absolute non-dancers, and most of them just want to be able to give up their anxiety about not being perfect. We _could_ achieve that with one disastrously bad couple, but that would make everyone uneasy on their behalf, and poison the atmosphere. So instead we achieve it by one incomparably good couple. That would be us.”

So I gave him my most honest response. “You really think you can keep up with me?”

And instead of the eyeroll and “ _Of course_ I can” I was expecting, I heard, “if you’ll coach me, practise with me, then yes.”

I was still uncertain, but his earnestness was kind of winning, and I did owe it to him to help. For some reason this meant a lot to him. He talked me through the organisation (I’d call it micro-management) he’d put together. He had a play list, for fuck’s sake. He had a spreadsheet. And he really _had_ found a way to avoid most of the pitfalls I could imagine.

I had a suggestion for his last unsolved puzzle—who could emcee the event, make it really comfortable and convivial—and when that fell into place we were off. Partners. Dancing together once or twice a week. Me and the madman. Me and Sherlock Holmes.

* * *

We started to meet at a studio I sometimes used. He’d wanted us to use his own; teeth gritted, I pointed out that that address meant a long slog for me. He looked surprised, as though he’d forgot that not everyone could afford to live in central London. When I mentioned that getting home on the tube late at night presented its own problems, he went bright red.

Since then I’ve seen him flushed with exertion, but he never went that scary purple colour again. It was as though he’d just remembered _why_ a woman— _this_ woman—might not want to trudge home late and tired from not only a long day of work but a vigorous and sometimes tense workout as well. Since that exchange he never complained about making the slog himself. Twice, in fact, he put me in a cab at his expense. Once, when we were arguing about steps and tempos and lifts, he escorted me home himself. Like I said. Decent.

He never lost sight of the fact that I was doing him a favour, either. (Repaying one.) He didn’t act stuffy or haughty. Didn’t get defensive when he botched a step or a move. Didn’t lord it over me when I did, either. After the second practice night we stopped being careful, too. Didn’t mince words or try to keep our tempers.

In temper, if not temperament, we were pretty evenly matched. I’d rarely had a partner that compatible since my injury, in fact. And by his account, he never had. We were actually good partners. We could do a lot without talking, and on the floor at least, he deferred to me.

The only thing I didn't get, at first, was why our dance practice had to be such a secret. He insisted that it did, but wouldn't really explain why. Well, it was no problem for me: I had nothing to gain by announcing I was dancing on a regular basis with someone everyone knew I hated.

* * *

The two of us had never talked before, outside of his bizarre outbursts at crime scenes. Once we started dancing, though, we talked sometimes. By text. Easier for both of us. I could say a few awkward things that way, and so could he.

_— I’ve always been solitary too. Dance does that. SD_

_— Then why... SH_

_— The Freak stuff? Projection, I guess. SD_

_— Protection, rather. SH_

_— That, too. Sorry. SD_

_— Moratorium on apologies strictly enforced. SH_

_— OK. SD_

I've got a brother, and I don’t need another one. But having a brother meant I also had a tone, a pattern, ready to move into when we got better acquainted: a kind of teasing that was brisk but not mean. It worked, anyway. Talking got more comfortable the longer we danced together; and dancing got more comfortable the more we talked or texted.

* * *

_— Is all well? You seemed tired tonight. SH_

_— Bad dreams. SD_

_— I’ll rip his head off, shall I? SH_

(Damn it, he knew exactly what kind of dreams.)

_— Nah, you said yourself I can sort it. SD_

_— True, my money’s on you. But sometimes it feels good to delegate. SH_

_— Yeah, no. No female copper in the city can afford to let up on her self-defence routine. SD_

_— Right. Yes. No. SH_

_— But thanks for offering. SD_

* * *

He was still weird as all hell, and not always aware when he was violating normal boundaries.

“No, Holmes, you may not dress me. I know what I’m doing, thank you very much. No, not my hair, either.”

Fuck sake.

* * *

He wasn’t kidding when he said he needed me to coach him. He was capable and confident, but not nearly as experienced as me.

“ _Damn_ it, Holmes, that’s my bad ankle, could you just watch it for a change?”

Fast learner, though. Never made the same mistake twice.

“Donovan, for pity’s sake, what did you _eat_ tonight? You weigh two stone more than you did on Tuesday.”

He didn’t try that one again. He might have to lift me, but he didn’t get to call me fat. Not when I’d got out of an eating disorder that made me decide the force wasn’t such a bad career instead of dance. And not when I was twice the dancer he was, and quite capable of making it either far easier or way harder to lift me in the first place. Bastard.

* * *

The penny dropped when he made me lead. Not a problem, of course. It's like driving on the right side of the road: you just reverse everything, and do it ... forwards but still in high heels. But why?

I was quiet while we danced a waltz, then a fox trot, with me leading. I didn't need the practice; he did. But why?

" _Right_ foot, Holmes. You're the lady."

He flushed and I realised: of course. He'd be dancing with men. Some men. A man. Who would expect to lead. It wasn't my boss, I knew that. And, well, the field of suspects was not huge.

Decided not to comment, not to make him uncomfortable. Just tucked the thought away with some of the other data I'd been gathering.

* * *

The night Greg got a warrant Holmes’d been nagging him for, and couldn’t find him to search the premises—I saw my dance partner in a flap for the first time.

“Oh, God, it’s John. We’ve got to get to Islington right away. Lestrade finally got that search warrant.” Holmes had yanked his phone free of the sound system and was texting at a frantic pace.

I rolled my eyes: “After yelling at me to turn off my phone when we’re practising.”

“We’re telepathic, John and I.”

Snort. Pull the other one, lad. “Sure, that’s why _I_ have to dance with you twice a week.”

“Oh, come on, Donovan. You like it.” He was sparring on auto-pilot, though, flinging on his poncy coat over his workout gear, his mind already off the dancing and on to where we were going.

“In spite of you, I do.” With a jolt I realised I absolutely meant it. I didn’t just like it, I’d started looking forward to it.

“In spite of yourself.” He translated exactly what I’d meant, flashing a smile as he held the door open and shoo'd me through it.

“That too. You aren’t as lame as my other partners.”

He barked with laughter. “Don’t pile on the flattery, Donovan.”

“Oh, you wish.”

We got to the premises and I don’t think anyone noticed we came in the same cab.

That night and the next morning I fast forwarded everything for him with the paperwork, the permits, and the pathologist. That got me _his_ gratitude, and ungrudging respect. Things really had changed between us.

* * *

_— So, we going to have a dress? SH_

_— I told you, I have a dress. Creep. SD_

_— Creep. Better than freak, I suppose. SH_

_— Yeah, kidding. Of course we’ll have a dress. Can’t risk any surprises. SD_

For seven weeks we’d been practising these stodgy dances in our formal shoes, me with my hair up, but in workout gear. Couldn’t risk a wardrobe malfunction. So about a week out from the Gala we met at the studio dressed to kill. I even did my eye makeup to match the silver and gold in my dress.

Couldn’t believe how well he cleaned up. He’s always nicely turned out, but in the actual white tie and tails he was scary. And his weirdly light eyes got even brighter when he saw the dress.

“That dress is going to _make_ this number, Donovan.”

“I know, right? Just be sure not to hitch the skirt in the lift, or I’ll kill you right there on the floor. Drive this high heel into your eye, I will.”

He looked scornful. Rolled that eye.

“Just try not to embarrass yourself: you’re the one who picked the dress.”

"Yeah, after you vetoed feathers, florals, fluorescents, fur, sequins, spangles, and glitter."

"I do have standards." Loftily.

“Except for your ridiculous song and the flamboyant choreography, you mean.” I mean, really. _That song._ Tooth-rotting fluff, is what it is.

“You’re not fooling anyone. You love it. You’re going to look like a shooting star in the lifts.” He wasn’t wrong. The dress was miraculous that way, gathering all the light and drawing all the attention. No one would even see him, in his black tails.

“Just don’t drop me, I don’t want to look like a _falling_ star.”

“Stop it right now, or you’ll destroy my confidence.”

Oh yeah, right. I’d pay good money to see that, I would.

* * *

By the time we got to our private dress rehearsal, there was a nice buzz at the Met. "Who're you going with, what'll you wear, have you seen the play list, it's an _auction_ oh my God, how does it even _work_ , she got me a boutonnière can you believe it, I haven't waltzed in years."

Holmes had tapped into something I hadn't, in my own workplace: people were hungry for some formal night out, something to bolster "community spirit" (God, just hearing the phrase in my head made me queasy). Something playful, with the excuse of charity to give them the green light to let go, do something frivolous, look less than serious.

And by then I was as invested in the success of the event as he was. Not just the fundraising part, either. Or the pleasant atmosphere of the evening. Not just not looking stupid in front of all my colleagues—coming out as a flashy dancer with a partner they all thought I hated. It was pretty clear to me that Holmes had a plan with this gala that had more to do with John Watson than with anything else. And for his sake I hoped it'd work.

We only argued once, when I said: “why does it all have to be _sentimental_ music?”

I knew very well why, but Holmes never admitted it.

“You could include just a _few_ less ancient songs, you know. Even ... the seventies. The eighties.”

“Such as?” He sounded skeptical, but was clearly trying to be open.

"Anything released after I was _born_ , for instance."

I named a few that might reach a demographic slightly younger than the seventy-year-olds whose _parents_ might have listened to the playlist he’d drawn up. He vetoed them out of hand. That was okay; I was mostly just trying to get a rise out of him, after all. It was kind of touching, how he was delegating his declaration of love to a bunch of sentimental tunes.

It was also kind of endearing how target-fixated he was about getting home. We never went out for a drink after; he always wanted to get back to the object of his affection.

Once we shifted a move because he didn’t like to have me hanging from his neck. Fine with me; I didn’t want John Watson glaring at me, for that matter.

The closest I got to being direct with Holmes was when I said, “So, you really think this is going to work. Tell me why, again? I mean, he might not even agree to come.”

“He’s coming. It’ll work. Stop trying to terrify me.”

Fair enough. I stopped.

* * *

_— He’s going to get jealous, you do know that. SD_

_— I know. SH_

_— You’d do that to him. SD_

_— A temporary and very controlled experiment. Not a thoughtless side effect. SH_

_— Well, if you were smart you’d be extra nice and solicitous between times. SD_

_— You do know you’re the only person who’s ever said I wasn’t smart. SH_

_— I never said you aren’t smart. I said you aren’t normal. SD_

_— Normal’s boring. SH_

_— Isn’t it? SH_

_— You know, I’m starting to think you have something there. SD_

_— Any more at home like you? But straight? SD_

_— Not a chance. SH_

_— Just as well. Don’t know as I’d like to be related to you. SD_

_— You definitely wouldn’t like to be related to some of the people who are related to me. SH_

So it went on, two months of getting to know him, getting over my dislike, cautiously finding common ground. Without ever talking about it, we gradually went from loathing and distrust, through surprise and gratitude, to tentative appreciation and even, at times, enjoyment. Partnership.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from David Crosby's "Delta": "Fast-flowing rivers / of choice and chance / and time stops here / on the delta / while they dance"
> 
> Next up--thanks to the fic writers who helped me think this fic through at the summer 2019 retreat--John's take on all this.


	5. Where do you go to (my lovely)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I didn’t want things to change, and I didn’t want things to stay the same; if they did change, I didn’t want us to fail: my whole life was bound up in Sherlock. And I didn’t want to be that dependent, that connected. That vulnerable. I didn’t want him to be dependent or vulnerable, either. Oh, I was in a fucking stew. It didn’t help that the next day I kept getting distracted at work, daydreaming about Sherlock rescuing Sally Donovan in his ridiculously sexy get-up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the Fic Writers Retreat 2019 members who told me that Ch. 5 and 6 were flat-out necessary. They were right.

The night Sherlock and I slept together on the sitting-room sofa I’d thought—hoped—we were getting somewhere. There was nothing sexual about it, but there was definitely something _affectionate_ about it. More than affectionate. Romantic. Until I bottled it.

He woke up before me and scuttled off to the loo. Perhaps if we’d woken up together I might not have had time to overthink, to regret, to panic. To wonder what on earth it would be like to be his not just flatmate, not just friend, not just colleague. It was terrifying to think of how he would steamroll over me, how I'd go up like straw, how I’d be unable ever to be autonomous again. He’d have me under his thumb. I’d caught plenty of knowing looks from people who already thought I was his factotum or fuck toy. What would it be like to actually _be_ that hooked?

I’m not proud of it, but by the time he brought me tea and I pretended to wake up to his hand on my shoulder, I was well and truly freaked out. And I gave him something of the cold shoulder.

Hating myself as I did it. I knew what it did to Sherlock when I shut him out, or subjected him to my ruthless straighty-matey routine: it killed something in him, every time. But the raging erection I’d woken up with, after dreaming of him in his exotic dancing get-up and face glitter—panicked me again. For all I knew he was asexual, wanted closeness but not sex. And I was going to scare him away, at the rate of arousal I had going.

Was that what I was scared of? Scaring him off? Or was it the opposite: leading him on? It was both. It was neither. It was ... everything. Everything about this scared me.

I didn’t want things to change, and I didn’t want things to stay the same; if they did change, I didn’t want us to fail: my whole life was bound up in Sherlock. And I didn’t want to be that dependent, that connected. That vulnerable. I didn’t want him to be dependent or vulnerable, either. Oh, I was in a fucking stew. It didn’t help that the next day I kept getting distracted at work, daydreaming about Sherlock rescuing Sally Donovan in his ridiculously sexy get-up.

The following Tuesday I got home late, absolutely flattened by a day of GP-ing: half the staff out ill and twice the usual number of patients, all apparently stricken with the same flu. My dearest hope was for an evening in with Sherlock, an order of Indian takeaway, and the lamest action film I could find to watch with him. I was _wiped_.

But what I found, when I got in, was a galvanised and focused Sherlock, wearing _date_ clothing I’d literally never seen him in, with a grip in his hand and his most intent expression.

“Ah, there you are! I ordered you some curry. I’m headed out for the evening. Shouldn’t be too late, I imagine I’ll be back by ten or eleven. —You all right? You look terrible.”

Well, that was no help to my already sagging morale. “Thanks. You look the opposite of terrible.”

He smiled, just that little private turn-up of his lips when he’s genuinely pleased, and turned to leave.

“Where are you going?” I sounded needy, and I hated it.

“Got to see a man about a dog. Later!” Breezily enough to call attention to his refusal to answer.

Shit. Sherlock doesn’t usually bother to equivocate with me, and if he does, he tries to make it believable. This was more “none of your business.” But he’d bothered to make sure I was fed, and given me an ETA so I shouldn’t worry, so there was that.

I had a restorative shower, then did a few blog updates while I ate the excellent curry he’d ordered in. The terrible action film was actually funny, and I was almost surprised to hear Sherlock coming back in as the credits rolled.

He looked ... luminous. His color was high, he was in an absolutely elated mood, and his hair was wet. —Wait, what? I looked surreptitiously out the window; no rain.

As usual my attempt to sound nonchalant failed utterly. “Had a good evening?”

“Excellent, John. I could work all night now.” He sounded as energised as he looked.

“That’s not my definition of a good evening—making me want to work all night.”

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t I know it.”

He swung down the hall with his grip and into his bedroom, came back out a few minutes later with his at-home dressing-gown on and plumped down on the sofa beside me.

“Was it stupid, stupider, or stupidest?” He asked without malice, given that I knew his opinion of my taste in films.

“Only stupid. Quite funny at times, in fact. Just what I needed.”

“Just as well I wasn’t here to ruin it, then.” As he leaned over and retrieved my laptop, I smelled a distinctive combination of shampoo, cologne, and a kind of energetic perspiration that spoke of healthy exertion.

“Where were you? What were you up to?” Again with the nonchalance. I should just have admitted I was curious: he almost always told me where he was going.

“Oh, just out. I’ve got a project on. Nothing to do with the Work.”

* * *

And it went on like that: once or twice a week he went out and came back glowing, revitalised, optimistic. Freshly showered. And cagey. Exuding physical satisfaction. Sexy? He was always sexy. Something was different about the way he moved, though. He was always confident, controlled, muscled; now he was balletic, as though he was choreographing himself, his own movements.

It became something of a routine, if an irritating one. A couple of nights a week Sherlock would look up from an experiment or a dive through the internet, check the time, and head briskly down the hall to his bedroom (his) (damn it) (the “off limits” vibe it emanated) (he had no such scruples about _my_ bedroom) to pack up his grip. Three to four minutes later he’d stride past the door to the sitting room, pound down the stairs calling “bye” or “later” or some equally off-putting farewell that fairly shouted “don’t ask me anything.”

And I would fairly reliably stew about it, in my head talking through the likelihood that he was ... getting off on a regular basis. If he was, who with? Why was it so... scheduled? It only seemed regimented, though: the days and hours varied every week. Only the duration was stable: about three hours.

That was a clue, surely. I tried to figure out what it meant. Maybe he was meeting someone for regular exercise. Squash. Tennis. No, he’d have no reason to be so cagey about that, or about them.

Swimming? No, that wasn’t a partner sport, and besides he never smelled of chlorine when he came back. Nor did I ever see his obscenely skimpy swim trunks hanging up to dry.

A spa date? Twice a week was too often. And a spa treatment wouldn’t account for the physical—the _invigorated_ energy that poured off him every time he came back in.

Thai massage, or something equally strenuous? He didn’t like to be touched by strangers, as he’d told me often enough.

Back to square one, then. He was meeting someone for sex and he didn’t consider it enough of my business to tell me anything except “I’m going out.”

Fair enough. When I was dating I didn’t announce it to him, either. Never needed to, for that matter. He’d always beat me to it. “Date shirt, I see.” “For pity’s sake, John, with _Tracy_?” “She’s still in love with her ex-boyfriend, you do realise that.”

Well, I certainly couldn’t spike his enjoyment with any deductions of that nature. I was too mature to try to ruin his pleasure. I pretended not to be worried about this weirdly secretive routine, but I was. I really was.

If I was worried before, I really started to panic when the evening dates started to interfere with the Work.

It was one thing to leave me home alone with takeout and crap telly twice a week without telling me why. After all, our time together was otherwise lovely, and I had nothing to complain about but my own cowardly jealousy.

But the night Lestrade texted me with a terse “where the fuck is Sherlock,” I got... I don’t know. Nervous. Sick with it. Angry with it. Yeah, I thought, where the fuck _was_ Sherlock?

I got Greg to tell me where Sherlock had been meant to turn up, and I texted him myself, jabbing at the letters as though they’d done me a personal injury and were going to _pay_.

Lestrade was incandescently angry when I got to the scene in Islington.

“I had to try _three_ magistrates to get _one_ to sign this warrant. To do a search _Sherlock_ insisted on, and when I’ve got what he wants he can’t be arsed to show up or even answer my fucking texts. I _swear_ , John—”

I’d never seen the mostly mellow Lestrade in such a state. One of the magistrates—maybe two, maybe all three—must’ve ripped him a new one in the process of denying or granting him that warrant. Bruising brushes with higher-ups were the only thing that could usually ruffle his feathers that drastically.

His team was starting a very nervous, tentative search of the kitchen when Sherlock whirled in, flushed and overheated, his hair in a state I’d never seen out of doors, and wearing clothing that didn’t square with any of his usual personas. Or with my hopes of an innocent (read: non-sexual) explanation of his absences. As he whisked past I caught a heady scent of sweat, his own and someone else’s—and I swear to God, a hint of a woman’s perfume.

Christ. This was ... my adult brain tried for “unexpected,” but my hindbrain roared unhelpfully “ _not fucking ON_.” My head whipped round so fast to follow him, I pulled a muscle in my neck.

He had to grace to look self-conscious, and even apologised to Lestrade.

To me, he explained that his phone was set to silent for all numbers but mine, which vibrated. (Trust Sherlock to find a way to triage his calls and messages.) I was somewhat flattered but nowhere near mollified to be the one person who could reach him when he was _incomunicado_ with his _innamorata_ , and where was all this foreign euphemism garbage coming from anyway?

But he was ready to work now, if ruffled and out of breath and perhaps with a case of uncomfortable sexual frustration, oh fuck call it what it is, blue balls.

He found what he’d been looking for in pretty short order, in a flour canister out in plain sight, and Lestrade was placated. I certainly wasn’t.

Another time he actually _left_ a crime scene to head off to his _rendez-vous_ (for God’s sake, bloody _French_ now!), leaving me and Lestrade to goggle after him. I called to his retreating back,

“That’s it, is it? You’re just—off?”

He barely looked back as he shouted, “Obviously! Look at the footprints, for God’s sake! Do I have to do _everything_ myself?”

This, from the man who didn’t trust anyone to connect _a_ to _b_ , who mocked most of my own attempts to do so, and routinely dismissed Lestrade and his team’s abilities to tie their own shoes. I saw Donovan roll her eyes and set off after him, probably to capitalise on their newfound _détente_ (what _is_ it with these foreign euphemisms?) to get him to give her at least some lead on where he wanted those dots connected.

Lestrade looked after them, puzzled. “Well. That was a thing.”

And that’s all he said. He turned away to give directions to the various members of the force waiting to follow his lead. Neither Donovan nor Sherlock returned, so after another freezing cold quarter of an hour I said I was heading back to the flat, if he didn’t need me. He clearly didn’t; his own medical team was there, and I was surplus to requirements if Sherlock wasn’t there to insist on my input.

That was, indeed, a thing. Sherlock leaving a crime scene to head off to his assignation was another level of anomaly, and it was making me more nervous by the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Where do you go to, my lovely"  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8XQZYIiNgo
> 
> Editing this chapter I realized how indebted it is to cwb's "High and Tight, Soft and Loose." https://archiveofourown.org/works/4196670#main  
> (and there is a podfic tooooo)
> 
> If you think you heard a whisper of Harriet Vane in John's thoughts, you're right. And if you heard a bit of Crowley in Lestrade's last line, you're right there, too.


	6. Tomorrow I'll miss you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wondered if Sherlock might be on the verge of a change. A change that would put paid to our companionable cohabitation, just when it was returning to its previous equilibrium—well, what had seemed to _me_ to be equilibrium. I wondered too if Sherlock had felt as precarious, as peripheral, when I was dating, as I was feeling now. Maybe I’d kept him feeling off-balance, on the verge of losing a treasured, easy, symbiotic living situation with a uniquely compatible—friend. I felt melancholy, both on my own account now, and on his, then.

The evenings we spent together were oddly unaffected by Sherlock’s new ... activity. Interest. Commitment. Whatever the fuck it was.

Most evenings I got home and he was still and settled, wearing his at-home dressing-gown. Takeaway menus on the sitting room table. Then there was a kind of sweet comfort hovering about the flat, a comfort about which I was already feeling a bit nostalgic.

I wondered if Sherlock might be on the verge of a change. A change that would put paid to our companionable cohabitation, just when it was returning to its previous equilibrium—well, what had seemed to _me_ to be equilibrium. I wondered too if Sherlock had felt as precarious, as peripheral, when I was dating, as I was feeling now. Maybe I’d kept him feeling off-balance, on the verge of losing a treasured, easy, symbiotic living situation with a uniquely compatible—friend. I felt melancholy, both on my own account now, and on his, then.

The closest I ever got to articulating this to him was a night of Chinese food and a Japanese movie. A _King Lear_. (God, I hate that movie. It may have been a great film, but now it’s tainted with my uneasiness and, almost, sorrow.)

We settled in on the sofa, his bony feet under my thigh as usual, and while I always found that a little _stimulating_ , tonight I also found it sad. Like something I was going to miss.

His head whipped around and he paused the film, freezing the actor’s expression in a very bizarre grimace.

“ _What’s that?_ ” he demanded.

“What?” Defensively.

“That sigh.” Sherlock sounded annoyed.

“I didn’t sigh.” Even more defensively.

“You’ve done nothing _but_ sigh since the film started. It’s like sitting in a wind tunnel. Do you dislike Kurosawa that much?”

Well, that was a new one on me. “No. I—no. It’s good. I think.”

“You _think_?” He was sounding even more cross, now.

“I can’t really concentrate, to be honest.” I felt contrite at ruining the movie, but he _had_ asked.

He exhaled with a quiet huff. Definitely not a sigh. More of an irritated whoosh.

“Why not? What’s on your mind?” He didn’t _sound_ irritated anymore, though, he sounded concerned.

“Nothing much, really. Just—I like this.”

Silence. His feet started to shift, and I put my hand on his right ankle to stop him from moving.

“I mean. This is nice. Peaceful.”

Turned to look and saw him snorting back a laugh.

“What? It _is_!”

But now he was in a full-fledged giggle. “Yes, it is. Nice and peaceful. So I don’t see why you’re heaving gusty sighs over there. Come on. Out with it.”

I could never keep anything from him, not really. It was infuriating. My ears and cheeks burned.

“It’s just. I wouldn’t want us not to do this anymore.”

“Why would we stop?” He sounded perplexed, and then his voice sharpened. “You’re not dating someone, are you? Someone serious?”

Of course, he would know about that _one_ colleague I took out for coffee, that _one_ time last month.

“No, you berk. I’m not. _Are you?_ ”

Now I looked full on, and saw I’d taken him well and truly by surprise.

“Me? What—? No. Just, no. I’m not dating, you’re not dating, nothing has to change. Now stop making windmill noises and watch the film, John.”

Just for a moment he put his hand on my own over his ankle, flashed a quick smile, and started Kurosawa again.

Well, I guess that’s me told, then.

And even though we haven’t said or sorted anything at all, my wistful feeling of imminent loss is gone as if it’d never been. All that’s left is a wisp of regret for having kept him in that state of uncertainty for God knows how long, back before I’d faced the music.

Faced up to what I really wanted, who I really wanted. And what that meant about who I was.

* * *

It was two months of uncertainty. Not about what I wanted: that was sorted, in my mind at least, if not in his. I’d be lying if I said my own clarity on that issue wasn’t reinforced by my near-certainty that he was doing something very _like_ what I wanted, just with someone else. Now I knew that he did that: good. Was doing it with someone else: most definitely not good. So I was a little perplexed at how to proceed.

I didn’t want to snoop. Didn’t want to see, for example, if he had Grindr (or, given that waft of perfume, Tinder) installed on his phone. Didn’t want to check his text messages. Go through his mail to see if he was receiving bills from some ... spa or service. He trusted me with all his devices and data, and I wasn’t going to abuse that trust to spy on him. Though it’s what he would immediately have done in my place.

Same for following him—though that too he would do, in my place. Not that I _could_ follow him, of course. The one or two times I’d tried to tail someone in the course of a case, he’d let me know in no uncertain terms that even a toddler would have clocked me. Disguise was equally out of the question. As for hiring someone—the fact that I’d even considered it was proof of increasing desperation.

I could’ve just asked him. “Where d’you go, the evenings you go out? What do you do? Who with?”

But I _couldn’t_ ask that, not now, not after all this time. It would sound mortifyingly plaintive. No, the window of opportunity for asking that question without embarrassment on my side or his had closed weeks ago. Early on he’d used body language to forestall any inquiries on my part; more recently he’d gotten more matter-of-fact about the whole thing. But it was clearly not up for discussion. There was a veil of silence around his evening _sorties_. ( _Bloody French again_.)

I thought back to the last time his behaviour had been such a puzzle, back when the Woman had died and I’d thought him heartbroken. He’d played for hours, starved himself, stayed silent for days. Seemed to mourn her. Played obsessively that one tune that I hated even in memory.

This was nothing like that, though. He wasn’t inert or closed in; he was energised and active. He was eating better than I’d seen him do in literal years. Still eccentrically, more biscuits than rounded meals, but no disordered eating or fasting. His sleep cycles were fairly regular, at least for him. He was even texting with Sally Donovan once or twice a week, and she seemed to make him laugh a surprising amount, but that was the only thing I could put my finger on that was new.

He played his violin about the usual amount, a few evenings a week. The only difference I could hear was that he didn’t stick to playing his usual classical pieces. I noticed a fair number of mid-century torch songs. Didn’t let myself think too hard about what _that_ might mean; I’d never expected Sherlock to play songs I’d only ever heard sung by Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Vera Lynn, Ella Fitzgerald. Linda Ronstadt, k.d. lang, Tony Bennett. Love songs. Who was prompting those? No complaints about the songs themselves, though. Better than the "Irene is dead" dirge, for certain.

As so often happens with Sherlock, then, I had a choice that wasn’t really a choice. I could press him for confidences he very clearly didn’t want to make, and disturb the otherwise lovely harmony that seemed to be not just prevailing but growing.

Or I could wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from the Beach Boys, of course. 
> 
> Chapter 7: we finally get to the dance!


	7. L is for the way you look at me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A handful of tuxedo-clad men surrounds a slim woman in a striking black dress. It’s form-fitting to the waist, but flares out dramatically with pleats that open to reveal hints of gold and silver. When she walks these flame out into long metallic flashes as the skirt ripples, and John can only imagine how eye-catching that will be when she takes to the floor. She’s swallowed up in the crowd again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To my utter delight Khorazir AND Bluebellofbakerstreet have drawn the show dance, suddenly all my words evaporated and I'm just slack-jawed. Images in the end notes

This whole evening has something of the surreal about it, John thinks, tugging uncomfortably at the black tie at his neck. He doesn’t like formal dress, though he can carry it off reasonably well by adopting a more than usually military posture—but the tie he flatly loathes, and he tortures it at every opportunity. Why he and Sherlock have to be part of this absurd charity do at the Met is beyond him. They don’t socialise with Lestrade’s colleagues, most of whom think the consulting detective and his blogger a dodgy pair at the best of times.

When Sherlock had insisted they attend an event at which _dances were auctioned off to benefit the children of fallen policemen_ John had goggled, incredulous and frankly unwilling. He couldn't imagine why Sherlock should choose this occasion to set aside his haughty reclusiveness, or why John, whose dancing skills Sherlock didn’t hesitate to term “appalling,” should have to accompany him. In retrospect he doesn’t think he ever actually agreed, but this evening Sherlock had bundled him into a tux and a taxi as though the whole affair had been settled weeks back.

Well, there's always the pleasure of admiring Sherlock in white tie and tails—that's _some_ consolation, at least. He always looks sleek and graceful, whether in a dressing gown or a suit, but Sherlock in full evening dress is another order of magnitude of appeal. If John straightens his shoulders to wear a damned tux, Sherlock _glides_ when he walks in tails.

It’s going to take all of John’s restraint not to buy every dance with Sherlock whether within his abilities or not, just for the pleasure of putting his hand on that slim waist and pretending to guide him round the floor. Holding Sherlock, turning his head into his shoulder and breathing in that heady blend of scents that could make his knees buckle, if John hadn’t had so much practice disguising that reaction.

The ballroom is filling up, the tables around the dance floor small enough for conversation but large enough for conviviality. John hovers near the bar, still not fully resigned to this bizarre waste of an evening. They get so little down time, and for his part he’d have written a sodding cheque for the privilege of staying home and watching bad telly with Sherlock’s icy feet thrust obtrusively but not uncomfortably beneath his thigh.

He sips his martini—if he has to do these bloody old-fashioned dances to bloody old-fashioned torch songs he’ll drink something of the same vintage—and looks for Sherlock. Never hard to spot him. It’s as though the light gathers round him, people’s stares gather round him, imperious and elegant and somehow thrumming with nervous energy while remaining composedly still.

The first dance is just starting when John sees Sherlock join the couples on the dance floor. He’s leading a rather solid-looking woman of middle age, complete with thick ankles and a poofy hairdo. He’ll have to tease Sherlock later about taking to the floor with the stout DCI who looks like—

Oh. Never mind what she looks like. She can _dance_.

John knows Sherlock enjoys dancing; hell, he runs parkour, he hurdles, he rides and skates and skis. He’s coordinated and strong and graceful: of course any dancer who knows what he can do would buy a dance with him for charity. An arpeggio introduction leads into a lushly orchestrated version of _La Cumparsita_ so intense it nearly vibrates. The tango: such a seductive dance, so hyperbolically sexy, that even keeping to its most basic steps it’s easy to look ill-at-ease.

Sherlock does not look ill-at-ease. Neither does DCI Dumpy, for that matter. Unsmiling but perfectly in step with her gorgeous partner, her hands on him in a way John can only envy, she handles the sharp and the smooth motions of the dance with equal aplomb.

For his part Sherlock carries her through the tango as though she were a queen, a star, giving her all his attention and smiling slightly every time she carries off a showy turn. Nothing in his expression suggests he is deducing her, reading her for her secrets, or judging her unprepossessing appearance—an extra two stone carefully swathed in a loose-fitting black knit dress whose skirt flares nicely with the dance. A perfect gentleman and a perfect partner.

John is impressed. Touched, even. When the tango comes to an end Sherlock effortlessly dips his partner and John notes how she balances, just as effortlessly, in a very delicate pose. He reminds himself, not for the first time, that people aren’t caricatures: Sherlock's partner has grace, and confidence, and expertise, and that combination is ... hot.

They leave the floor and John heads for Sherlock, now leading his partner to her table. They smile at each other with an air of complicity that leaves John again secretly thrilled at how kind Sherlock is beneath it all, how he reads people beneath their surfaces. He asks for an introduction, resolving to learn the DCI’s name and retain it. Diana: he won’t pigeonhole her again. He smiles warmly and they leave her to her companions, all earnestly complimenting her on the tango.

Now the floor has filled with couples, mostly mixed, but two couples of women are dancing and one couple of men. Sherlock looks a bit heated, though his breathing is steady, and John hands him his martini to sip. Sherlock smiles his thanks. The plucky dancers on the floor are swaying and swinging to Louis Armstrong's warm, growly rendition of “I Get a Kick Out of You." When Armstrong sings “I get no kick from cocaine” John looks pointedly at Sherlock, who rolls his eyes.

John’s about to ask whether Sherlock has bought a dance with anyone, or whether his contribution to the charity will be limited to dancing with those who spend money for the privilege. Predictably, he doesn’t get the chance.

“I already made a bid. On Diana. I knew she could dance, and I thought she’d be an excellent warm-up partner. I was right, of course.”

John wonders with a flush who Sherlock's warming up _for_. He looks away to keep him from reading this question too in his eyes. A flutter of commotion at the door draws Sherlock’s attention and he murmurs, “Ah. Another partner of mine.”

A handful of tuxedo-clad men surrounds a slim woman in a striking black dress. It’s form-fitting to the waist, but flares out dramatically with pleats that open to reveal hints of gold and silver. When she walks these flame out into long metallic flashes as the skirt ripples, and John can only imagine how eye-catching that will be when she takes to the floor. She’s swallowed up in the crowd.

“I Get A Kick” comes to an end and there’s applause, then a pause as dancers go for a drink, check in at the bidding table, listen for their numbers on the loudspeaker.

The whole evening’s setup promised to deliver everything John would normally dread: cheesy songs played on hoary old LPs, an emcee making crude or coy quips, awkward silences and indecision on the part of the dancers, forced joviality and very British good humour “for the cause.” And a running joke on the difference between this Met gala and _The_ Met Gala.

To his surprise exactly none of that is happening.

For one thing, the song choices are tasteful, and had been announced in advance so that those attending could plan their dances based on their own abilities. The emcee is actually discreet, and hasn’t made a single cringe-worthy joke. Everyone wants to help this particular cause, so the emcee isn’t reduced to begging or feigning a party atmosphere. Instead she announces the earnings after every song, encouraging the dancers to bid higher with a thoughtful “ _now_ we’re getting somewhere,” or “ah, another maximum bid from the amazingly generous, if clearly anonymous, PC Plod.” The dancers are eager, and even the non-dancers—spouses, partners, friends, flatmates who’ve come along for company—enjoy watching.

Over the loudspeaker John hears the emcee’s warm, low voice saying, “D.S. Donovan has bought 'L-O-V-E' with Number 221. Number 221, please meet your partner at table 14.”

John smiles in surprise: the striking woman in the black dress with those half-concealed metallic panels in the skirt is indeed Sally Donovan. Her curly hair, held by gold barrettes, cascades down her back; her eyelids are dramatically gold; her shoulders are bare and she's really quite striking.

Sherlock strides away to join her and she holds out her hand to him with a smile so warm and so open that John thinks he must be hallucinating. Donovan not merely accepting but _bidding_ to dance with Sherlock, and welcoming him with a regal hand: _everything John knows is wrong_.

* * *

The song begins, a short lilting scale up and down, and the lush voice of Natalie Cole sings “ _L_ is for the way you look at me.” From that moment John is quite simply riveted. The music is exhilarating, Cole’s singing is beguiling, Sherlock’s sure, agile footwork is doing extraordinary things to his already bewitching legs and hips, and the way Donovan’s dress flashes silver and gold is nothing short of entrancing.

“ _O_ is for the only one I see,” Cole trills flirtatiously, and John is as happy as he ever remembers being, watching Sherlock whirl the unexpectedly gorgeous Donovan round the floor as the other dancers make room for them. “ _V_ is very, very, extraordinary,” indeed.

Halfway through, the key and the mood change; Cole takes the song in a decidedly jazzy direction, and Sherlock and Sally up their game. Now it's fairly obvious _what_ Sherlock has been up to all those evenings, if not entirely _why_.

The other dancers actually line the walls now, as Sherlock and Sally lay out a pattern of dance steps that frankly go beyond anything John can imagine mastering. From the swoop and glide of the song’s first half to the tiny flitting steps Sally takes before Sherlock grasps her waist and lifts her in a semi-circle, her dress fanning out in a perfect crescent of light and dark—Sherlock’s pale face, Sally’s chiaroscuro dress are all John can see, and he’s giddy with delight.

He becomes aware of Greg standing next to him, having left the floor with Amanda from Vice, looking at the spectacle with the same evident pleasure as John.

“Never been happier to be outclassed,” says Greg, grinning at John. “Sherlock never fails to surprise me, but Donovan—who ever knew? And Sherlock and Donovan _together_ —knock me down with a feather.”

John doesn’t take his eyes off the dancers as he replies, “He’s been texting with her a bit. I assumed it was about the rohypnol case—never imagined they were cooking _this_ up. I don’t suppose either of them will have any more free dances this evening, they’ll be all bid for.”

As Cole sings a bouncy “ _E_ is even more than any-any-anyone that you adore,” Sherlock dances Donovan backwards and, incredibly, down between his legs only to pull her up again once he’s swung a long leg over and reversed his position.

Greg says, cheerfully, “I bid on a dance with Sherlock, mostly just to take the piss. But a few numbers are coming up that are meant to be for same-sex dancers. Maybe you could still score a dance with him.”

John resolves to hurry to the bidding table as soon as this fantastic display is over, even if he has to trample over dancers and wait-staff and the Chief Constable on his way.

Already the music’s reaching its climax; the dancers are probably grateful the song is relatively short, since it’s energetic and demanding. Cole’s whooping conclusion is drowned out as the whole room erupts in delighted applause. Sally sketches a mock curtsy that makes her dress flame out again as Sherlock holds her hand to steady her; he stands still and lets her receive the adulation.

John takes advantage of the crowd’s focus on them to make his way quickly to the bidding table. He reads through the list of songs upcoming, chooses one he thinks is slow enough for him to manage, and bids the maximum for “The Very Thought of You.”

He’s touched that he himself has been bid for—as number 221b, no less, just like Sherlock's sense of humour. When he tells the two young PCs handling the bids, "My mad flatmate signed me up," he learns that Sherlock isn't just here for the dancing, but has virtually engineered the entire event. And oh, John has questions.

He spots another number he can probably handle, “Just the Way You Look Tonight,” and thinks it might make Sherlock laugh to see him dancing it with Sally, whose looks have certainly bowled over the entire room. He's got a few questions to ask her as well—Sally, whom he has never, for reasons he cannot quite articulate, managed to forgive for her part in Sherlock’s disgrace and “suicide.” He makes another maximum bid for that one and hopes she’ll go easy on him, since he’s clearly not in her class. 

The dance Sherlock has bid with him is “Unforgettable;” anxiously he runs over the tune in his head and realises with relief that it’s another slow dance. With low-level dread he asks whether he has to be available for every number, but the PCs assure him that he can cross his name out for any that he doesn’t want to risk. He crosses out quite a few.

He intercepts Sherlock coming off the floor and steers him deftly away from the congratulatory crowd that forms around him. He knows Sherlock likes to shine but hates the small talk; it’ll be an act of mercy to spare him both the boredom and the temptation to say something impatient. He takes Sherlock's elbow and puts a glass of sparkling water in his hand.

“That. was. _fantastic_. You’ll have to tell me about how you knew Sally’s secret: she's not just a good dancer, she's top flight. So you two have been practising together? _That's_ what you've been up to all these weeks?”

Sherlock’s pale face is flushed from the exertion, from his cheekbones down to the hollow of his throat. “Obviously, John. What did you think I was up to?"

"How was I meant to know? You certainly weren't telling." John tries for acerbic, but really he's too happy to pull it off: Sherlock's evenings weren't what he'd feared, and he's starting to hope he can guess what they _were_ all in aid of.

"Well, it was meant to be a surprise. It took a _lot_ of practice. Do you think even I can improvise something like that?”

“Well, no,” John says equably, “but you know exactly what I know about dancing. Maybe you and Donovan were born able to do that. Anyway, it was stunning—I couldn’t look away.”

Sherlock smiles, a little upward curve of the left side of his mouth that has nothing of the smirk about it. “You weren’t supposed to look away. Did I see you go bid on a dance?”

Secretly pleased that he'd been watching, John smiles nonchalantly and says, “Yeah. I may not be in her class, but I wanted to at least try dancing with Donovan. I bid on her for ‘Just the Way You Look Tonight.’”

Sherlock’s face goes carefully blank, and immediately John feels contrite. Why shouldn’t he make it plain that it was Sherlock, not Sally, who'd bowled him over? “Right after I bid on _you_ for ‘The Very Thought of You,’ that is.”

When Sherlock goes slightly pinker John has to fight the urge to lean up and kiss him then and there. Sherlock is blushing at John’s romantic choice of song, after an athletic, even aerobic, dance that had him repeatedly hoisting a partner has left him flushed already: it's so endearing John can hardly stand it. How could he have thought he’d rather lounge around 221b watching crap telly than watching his charismatic partner perform all this seductive beauty for an admiring crowd?

“I admit, I thought you were mad to drag us out to this do. But I’m loving it. Love watching you dance—you’re amazing.”

Sherlock pinks up even further, and John reaches up and adjusts his white tie, unconcerned that the gesture looks more than a little proprietary. It’s meant to.

“Well, that’s fair, then. I bid on you for “‘Unforgettable.’” Sherlock’s voice is not quite as controlled as usual. There’s something high and almost breathless about it. Sherlock sounds— _nervous_.

“I saw. One of my favorites, Nat King Cole, right?”

“Yes. You don’t mind? I thought you’d rather dance with me for one of the same-sex dances. Makes it look like less of a choice. Stand out less.” John’s heart jerks at the nonchalant tone in Sherlock’s voice that barely masks his uncertainty, his humility. Suddenly he can’t bear it another moment, that Sherlock should think John would be embarrassed to dance with him.

“Oh. I just bid on you for a song I thought you’d like, one I might just about manage without embarrassing myself. Or you. I don’t know if it’s mixed-couple—it’s all the same to me. I’m still going to be the envy of the whole room. You’ll be very busy, you know.” John says this airily, but a thread of jealousy runs through the timbre.

Sherlock smiles serenely. “No, I won’t. I already blocked myself out of all the numbers I didn’t want to dance, and just left a few open for the fundraising. I’m not that comfortable doing ballroom dance with strangers.”

He doesn't seem to notice this isn't very consistent with having organised an entire evening of ballroom dance, and John isn't about to put him out of countenance by mentioning it just yet.

“Ha,” he says instead, as if gratified. “I did the same, but that’s just because I didn’t want to exceed my marginal competence. Who else are you partnering?”

“Apparently Lestrade bid on me, probably to wind me up. And a senior officer in Terrorism I owe a favour to. And Molly. She bid on me for ‘Just the Way You Look Tonight,’ so I suspect self-mockery.” Sherlock has the grace to look chagrined. They both know how hard Molly had worked to stop adoring him.

“I took her shopping for her dress, so do please be complimentary.”

John had already clocked Molly, dancing a careful waltz with Greg to “Moon River.”

“I won’t have to try: she looks perfect. That dress shows Molly off better than anything I’ve seen her wear since our Christmas party, when you deduced her gift.”

Now Sherlock looks even more miserable. “Don’t remind me. But I couldn’t risk having her turn up in something like that yellow thing she wore last summer, with a floppy rag in her hair. I couldn’t have danced with her no matter what she bid. —The thing is, Molly's _lovely_ , with a figure any designer would kill to dress. She needs to learn to make it simple, and carry herself as though she improves her clothing rather than the reverse.”

John smiles warmly up at him. “You mean, the way _you_ do. You always look like you’re doing your clothing a favour.”

“And so I am, John. But it’s easier to pull it off when someone is kind enough to appreciate the result. Molly doesn’t have a reliable source of ... encouraging admiration.”

Sherlock still looks and sounds nervous, as though he’s trying to thank John for a reaction John couldn’t conceal if he tried.

With some surprise John realises that he’s proud of Sherlock. Proud of him for organising this whole absurd, delightful, inspired evening, for charity no less. (And, perhaps, just a bit, for him.) For throwing himself into the discipline of his secretive rehearsals, and then into the limelight, for the success of the event. For caring enough about Molly’s confidence to find her the frankly stunning burgundy gown she’s wearing now, with lines so severe and accessories so unfussy that she’s easily the handsomest woman in the room—after the unexpected revelation of Donovan, that is.

“It’ll be a pleasure to watch you dance with her. Really, Sherlock, I’m enjoying this about ten thousand times more than I expected to. I love watching you, and I’m not the only one.”

He watches as Sherlock, disconcerted, smooths his white waistcoat and listens for the announcer. Perhaps he thinks John's teasing. John will show him, when they dance, that he’s never seen anything more beautiful than Sherlock in motion, his perfect body moving in easy harmony with his extraordinary mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Natalie Cole singing "L-O-V-E":  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iiio4h60qU
> 
> Louis Armstrong singing "I Get a Kick Out of You":  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zol48vGpVQ
> 
> John is (mentally) a bit of a shit on the subject of Sherlock's first partner. He gives himself a check, but he's got some work to do, drat him
> 
> Khorazir and Bluebell's knockout renditions of Sherlock and Sally's show dance:


	8. Unforgettable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They seem to move automatically in sync, John competent if not effortless, coordinated if not smooth, and Sherlock’s overcome with tenderness at kind, caring John stepping outside of his comfort zone like this. He bends down and discreetly breathes in John’s hair, his slight sweat from the slight exertion of their slow, swaying dance. This alone could almost, almost, be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's reading and commenting. Comments are my favorite thing, long or short, words or emojis, English or squee, shouts or whispers

So far the evening is turning out precisely as Sherlock had planned. The tango with Diana and the foxtrot with Sally had been stunning, creating a buzz throughout the room (which Sherlock doesn’t care about at all) which has translated into lively business over at the bidding table (which Sherlock does care about, a bit, as the whole idea of turning the Met’s annual formal fling into a fundraiser was his, and if the event had been a dreary flop the backlash could have been ... inconvenient).

Most gratifyingly, John had taken his cue instantly and _floated_ over to the bidding table to secure a dance with him. That means he’d probably been pleased to discover he’d been bid on himself, and the resulting boost to his confidence would account for the slightly heightened intimacy of John’s body language since the second show dance had ended.

Now there's half an hour or so before they will dance together, and he can freshen his drink (still sparkling water—he won't be making _that_ mistake again), comb his hair smooth again, check out his dance roster (and John’s), and add another song to the DJ’s list. He’s astonished he hadn’t thought of that tune before. He'll slot it in near the end, and make sure John is his partner for it. If anything's gone amiss with one of their dances in the meantime, this song can make his _sentiments_ clear at the end of the evening.

He watches with pleasure as Molly accepts another dance with Lestrade, serenely extending a hand to him—she’s riding the elation of knowing that she looks perfect. The chignon was an inspiration, he thinks. It balances the gamine effect of her usual posture and expression, makes her hold her head higher and keeps her from fiddling with her hair. Makes her look more poised, like her stately gown. Later they could work on making her _dominate_ the gown.

She looks more like Audrey Hepburn now, less like Sally Field. Lestrade’s undisguised interest is boosting her confidence as well. They step into place for “Cheek to Cheek,” and he remembers he’s engaged to dance with Charlotte Gordon just as the loudspeaker invites dancer 221 to meet his partner at table five.

He reaches her in time to get to the edge of the dance floor as the gentle bounce of the introduction begins. She’s a tall woman and they do indeed dance cheek to cheek without any uncomfortable contortion or forced embrace. Her emerald-green sheath keeps her movements relatively sedate, but she’s a self-assured dancer and he knows they look striking together. They haven’t been talking as they dance, but he remembers her as _not boring_ , so he asks whether she dances regularly and if so, where. He hasn’t found a regular outlet himself.

She’s observant enough to know that he isn’t making a subtle move on her, and they talk about dance venues and styles, partners and misadventures, until she actually makes him smile, even laugh. He’s rewarded by a pleased look from John, floating past with the capable Diana keeping him in line. He has an unfamiliar thought: “Fun. I’m having fun, with strangers, in public. So this is what it’s like.”

The realisation is unnerving enough that he’s relieved to escort Charlotte Gordon back to her table and to her date, a tall, stiff solicitor wearing the annoyed look of someone who doesn’t dance, trying to fit in with basically nothing to do and no one to do it with.

* * *

Time now. "Unforgettable" has crept up on him, and John’s moving toward him across a dance floor populated by several couples of men. The floor’s less full now than for the other dances, as not every man is as able or willing as Sherlock is to dance with another man in public, whether leading or not, even for a good cause. He and John will have enough space to talk without being overheard, if John wants to talk at all—if he isn’t obsessed with staring at his feet. That has been a risk all along, but Sherlock knows from experience that he can distract John away from his anxiety about putting a foot wrong. He just has to find the right words, the right topic.

There it is. John’s hand, in his own. John’s other hand on his waist, leading, his expression fond as he looks slightly up. Suddenly it all feels almost overwhelming. He's created a minutely detailed scenario to get John to dance with him—to get John to dance with him _in public_ —and to normalise for him the idea and the fact of themselves as male partners. The whole Met had been unwitting co-conspirators in this plan, and here John seems perfectly comfortable, amenable, pleased with it. Could it be that he never needed to go to these lengths?

He pulls out one of his prepared questions to draw John’s attention from his own feet to his partner. “Do you have plans for this weekend?”

It works. John looks quickly up at him and says, “No, but I hope you do, and I hope they include me. I’m just about ready for an adventure. What’s on your mind?”

He feels his hand trembling slightly, so he grasps John’s harder, and smiles. “It may be time for a mini-break. We have a client with a problem up in the Lake District.”

John’s face breaks into a delighted grin. “Seriously?! Couldn’t get any farther away? Do you know the place? My God, Sherlock, it’s paradise up there. I’m in!”

They seem to move automatically in sync, John competent if not effortless, coordinated if not smooth, and Sherlock’s overcome with tenderness at kind, caring John stepping outside of his comfort zone like this. He bends down and discreetly breathes in John’s hair, his slight sweat from the slight exertion of their slow, swaying dance. This alone could almost, almost, be enough. John’s proximity, his pleasure in this, his excitement at getting out into the countryside for a case—combined with his simply beautiful face and form, his allegiance to Sherlock, established at last. If this evening gives him nothing more than this moment and this music, this mood and this man, it will already have been a success.

Talk about logistical details for the weekend keeps John's focus for the rest of the song, until he starts quietly singing along with the last lines in his light, high, sure tenor, so pleasing though untrained.

“ _That’s why, darling, it’s incredible, that someone so unforgettable, thinks that I am unforgettable too._ ” For a moment Sherlock can pretend that John is singing it for him.

The music ends and the dancers separate and applaud. Sherlock takes the chance to appreciate the unexpected pairings of men obliged to dance with each other: reedy Dimmock with the portly Chief Constable, slightly rumpled Lestrade with the sleek chief of Forensics, and his favorite pair, a campy gay D.S. reveling in the discomfort of a distinctly grumpy-looking closeted bi man. He could dance with the D.S. himself, Sherlock thinks. That is, if he can be bothered to dance with anyone but John ever again.

John hasn’t been looking around them, though. His gaze is fixed on Sherlock’s face, his eyes narrowed slightly, as if trying to figure something out. Sherlock keeps his own expression open and smiling. “That was lovely, John. Thank you.”

John shook his head a bit as if re-focusing, and said, “Thank _you_ for bidding on me. And for such a good song, too. It really works.” He colours as if he’s made a gaffe. Sherlock doesn’t let him back down.

“No one more suitable for it.” In every inch of his body he feels the thrill of what they’re saying to each other, what they’ve never said before. He realizes he’s still holding John by the shoulder, squeezes once, and lets go.

John unfreezes, smiles even more warmly, and says, “Don’t forget, you’re mine for ‘The Very Thought of You.’”

“No chance I’ll forget. I only have to get through my dances with Molly and I’ll be back for you.” Sherlock leans in, makes his expression communicate intent. Molly is bearing down on them, though, drawing attention as her full skirt flows behind her, and they step apart.

“My turn, John! You’ve been dancing with the handsomest man in the room, and I get him now. Sally tells me you’re on with her, and she’s waiting over by the bar. Don’t you dare forget to compliment her on that dress.”

John groans, tells Sherlock, “and now _you’re_ dancing with the handsomest _woman_ in the room, so I’ll just go collect Sally and try to keep up with her.” Molly colours with pleasure and shakes her head _no_ , stammering out her embarrassed demurrals even after John’s out of earshot. She’s still wittering on when they reach the dance floor and Sherlock, tired of it, sees an opportunity.

“Molly. There’s a very easy reply you can make to compliments—my mother taught it to me when I was a child. Would you like to hear it? It will save you the world of trouble, I assure you.”

As Molly too is not a confident dancer, distracting her from her anxiety serves two purposes: keeping her both from obsessing about her steps, and from asking any probing questions about his dance with John. She looks up as he whirls her through “I will get a glow just thinking of you,” and asks, “Well, what is it, then?”

He holds her gaze a moment, then says, solemnly and insistently, “‘ _Thank you_.’”

She laughs and he grins at her. “If you absolutely must add something, Molly, a simple ‘how kind of you’ will do admirably. You really must stop telling people they’re wrong and idiotic to admire you, you know. It’s hardly polite.”

At first Molly looks much struck, as though she had never thought of this before, and Sherlock thinks that if he can only help her get out of her own way, he’ll be satisfied—he doesn’t want her to become a glib and smooth conversationalist, she wouldn’t be Molly any longer.

But she surprises him with a quick riposte: “Sherlock Holmes, _of all the people_ to lecture me on politeness—!”

Nettled, he retorts, “Yes, the irony is not lost on me. But when I’m rude it’s because I choose to be, whereas you do not.”

“I don’t think I’m rude. People can tell I’m just embarrassed.” Fretful, Molly almost misses a step, and Sherlock searches for another distraction.

“But you’ve nothing to be embarrassed about. So just try it for a week and see how you go. — _Left_ , Molly. Do keep up.”

He changes the subject to clothing, and gives her marching orders for shopping. As the song winds down he looks down at her and says, “But you know, you shouldn’t change. You _should_ ‘keep that breathless charm.’ You’re a dear, and I owe you a great deal.”

As he whirls her to a halt Molly looks down at her feet, gorgeous painted toenails peeking out of her open-toed pumps, and says demurely, “ _Thank you_.”

The dancers’ applause drowns out his surprised shout of laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TC_Rm6y1RY&list=PLdOk_hJFE1pfOLpMet_mIyON1KeUguhFA  
> Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett, "Cheek to Cheek"
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXjdMV7SOfE  
> Nat King Cole, "Unforgettable"
> 
> "Lovely, never, never change; keep that breathless charm, won't you please arrange it cause I love you, just the way you look tonight?"
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIQ93IpJwhQ  
> Billie Holiday, "The Way You Look Tonight"


	9. They can't take that away from me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The way you changed my life: no, no, they can’t take away from me.” 
> 
> The key modulates and Louis Armstrong’s growly rasp gives a different tenor to the whole song: if he and Sherlock don’t have a proper conversation after this night, then they may never do. And it will be too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bluebellofbakerstreet has posted a glorious rendition of Donovan and Sherlock's show dance. TWO CAKES, y'all!  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/22502323

John may be leading, but Donovan is in charge. A basic foxtrot to “The Way You Look Tonight” is just about the most he can manage with a dancer as adept and powerful as she is, and from the moment they pair up it is clear he’s going to have to buckle up and hold on tight. Fortunately she’s danced with her share of less proficient partners, has mastered the art of leading without seeming to.

He’s still enchanted with the play of light and darkness in her dress, and watches that instead of his own feet or her face. They’re not silent for long, because she clears her throat and seems intent on saying something.

“Hmm?” John looks up and asks, noncommittally. If she wants to speak she’ll have to take her courage in both hands—he’s not going to make it easy for her.

“I—I just wanted to say—I apologised to Holmes but I never—to you, for what happened, I mean, for what I _did_ , when he—when Moriarty—anyway, I want to apologise now. I am _so sorry_. Words cannot express how sorry I am.”

Her eyes are boring into his as though to compel him to believe her.

Her complete physical control wars with her tentative verbal delivery, and John sighs as she turns them.

“I know, Sally. And I appreciate it. I hated you for a long time, you know. Years. And after that—after Sherlock came back—I just resented you."

She looks a bit startled at this frankness, dismayed but not offended.

He continues. "But grudges are draining, and I’ll be glad to lay this one aside. Moriarty played you. He played all of us.”

Another turn in the dance but Donovan’s on it, making first a full and then a half-twirl, making it look as though he's guiding her hand as it describes a graceful arc over her head and then comes to rest at her shoulder. Good thing she _is_ on top of all this, as his mind is momentarily caught up in the past.

“Not you _._ He didn’t play you—you knew Holmes was for real. I wish I’d listened to you. We thought—I thought—you couldn’t be impartial about him because you were—.” She huffs and suspends her sentence.

“I was what?” He glances down again at the silvery-gold shimmer flashing out from the panels of her black gown.

“Infatuated. Well. You know what I mean.”

By now they’re at the edge of the dance floor and John decides to draw her off the floor altogether. His arms fall and they stand and look at each other for a moment. John lifts his brows, daring her to finish her thought.

“When he, two months ago, I mean, when he rescued me, I saw a side of him I’d not seen before. I saw what you must see. I saw how furious it makes him, people being cruel, not fighting fair. He didn’t spend a second considering whether I deserved rescuing, deserved his help. He just saw what was happening and got busy. Greg told me what he said to that bastard. I’m telling you, it brought tears to my eyes. I never...”

“You never what?” Gently.

“I never thought he had any respect for me, for anything about me. What Greg told me—it blew me away. I just wanted you to know: I see it now. I see why you’re so loyal to him.” She puts a hand to her cheek as if to cool a hot blush, and John's moved to break the tension of the moment.

“Well, I’m glad you appreciate him more now. And I’m glad you can dance with him. That was quite a show you put on, earlier. But don’t think you're going to be his partner anywhere but on the dance floor. Find your own genius to solve crimes with.”

Her voice and expression relaxing, Donovan laughs. “He's _so_ not my type. And anyway, I don’t think he’s looking to replace you.”

John looks uncertainly up at her. “Good. All those evenings he was out—with you, I imagine—I didn’t know what to think.” He doesn’t like how unguarded his voice is.

She laughs again and then, doing a double-take, suddenly stops. “What more does he have to _do_? Sky-writing? A forehead tattoo? An interview on Graham Norton? For God’s _sake_ , are you _serious_?”

John can see Sherlock turn to look at them, as Donovan’s voice has risen and sharpened in her sarcasm. He says hastily, “No, no, of course not. Here, let’s go have a sip of something, toast your conversion.”

She gives him an eye-roll worthy of the master himself, and when the music stops they applaud with the rest. John thinks she just may be applauding for Sherlock.

* * *

John takes a few minutes after his dance with Donovan, less to catch his breath than to order his thoughts about what she’d said. _Infatuated_. It was that obvious, then. The next two songs are for more sure-footed dancers anyway, he thinks, and he’d rather watch Sherlock light up the room. But Sherlock’s nowhere to be found, and John wonders idly whether he’s slipped out for a cigarette—he hopes not.

So he stops by a table where a few younger Met officers have hailed him. He answers a few questions about cases, puts one sarcastic young man in his place, then hears his number called for a dance with Greg. John grins, looking forward to this.

To his utter delight Greg has picked “They can’t take that away from me,” and even better, it’s a duet sung by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. For a moment John and Greg tussle over who’ll lead, until Greg announces pugnaciously that as the bidder he gets to do it; John yields, seeing Molly and Sherlock pairing up over Greg’s shoulder. Greg really is a better dancer than John expected; nothing posh or polished about it, but he never loses his place or his rhythm, so he can look cheerfully round the room. John envies his casualness on the dance floor.

“The way you sip your tea”: Sherlock tosses John a smiling glance as he steers Molly past them, Ella’s lush alto voice dipping deep for the low notes. “The way your smile just beams”—and suddenly John realises. This has nothing to do with Sherlock's current partner: this is _all_ about the two of them, and deliberately so.

Sherlock has clearly planned this evening down to the last detail, and what he hasn’t planned he’s predicted. “The way you changed my life: no, no, they can’t take away from me.” The key modulates and Louis Armstrong’s growly rasp gives a different tenor to the whole song: if he and Sherlock don’t have a proper conversation after _this_ night, then they may never do. And it will be too late.

John senses Greg craning and twitching to catch sight of Molly in Sherlock’s arms. Greg knows better than anyone how long Molly had pined, and how hopelessly. John gives his hand a shake and says, “eyes on me, mate. Molly’s in good hands, so just make sure we don’t bump into anyone until you get her back.”

Greg’s kind face creases into smiles and he says, encouragingly, “Good man. Sometimes you just have to dare, don’t you? Sometimes you just have to take a chance.”

Startled, John looks up, but Greg is already following Molly with his eyes again. John can’t blame him. Her slight form, her handsome gown, her slender neck holding her head high—she looks like a princess in a Hollywood film. Sherlock’s smiling down at her kindly, not tenderly but affectionately, and again John feels a rush of pride in him. Sherlock’s being truly generous with her now, careful not to put her out of countenance when she’s so uncertain of her public persona.

After the trumpet solo the duet comes to a close, and Molly and Sherlock glide to a stop, Molly’s gown swirling around her before it too hangs still. Something in Molly’s expression is poignant, like a farewell, John thinks. Sherlock smiles, puts his hands on her shoulders, and kisses her cheek. Then he leads her off the dance floor to the little table where she left her wrap. With a pointed grin Greg thanks John for the dance, and hurries off to join her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVvkPlAXhE8  
> Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Sheer perfection. (Fight me)


	10. Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The song is an incongruous choice for Greg, since neither of them has any amorous history with the other, but he seems to be determined to make Sherlock notice all the lyrics. What is Greg playing at? Staring up at Sherlock now, Greg seems to smile as though proud of him for figuring something out. He murmurs, “Good man. Sometimes you just have to dare, don’t you? Sometimes you just have to take a chance.” Sherlock’s eyes fly open, astonished. Is it Greg who’s figured something out?

Sherlock gives John a smirky little smile and strolls over to the table where Greg has been making Molly blush. He arrives just in time to hear her say, “Oh— _thank_ you, Greg, what a kind compliment,” and he makes an undignified snorting sound that he turns into an ostentatious cough. Greg takes his hand off Molly’s bare arm and looks resignedly up at him: “This it, then? My turn to let you shine by comparison?”

Sherlock assumes an affronted expression and says, “Please, Graham. I hardly need your help to look capable on a dance floor.”

Greg’s eye-roll too rivals Sherlock’s best, but he stands, settling his sleeves and jacket before following Sherlock back out onto the floor. John, as hoped, is propping up the wall and holding a glass of something refreshing—it would decidedly not suit Sherlock’s purpose for him to be bidding on, or bid on by, one of the women here this evening. Quite selfishly he wants John’s attention, his admiration, his time, and _all_ the rest of his dances. As soon as he has displayed to advantage in the rumba with his old friend Greg, he intends to dedicate the rest of the evening to John alone. To _getting_ John alone. To getting John to understand.

Doris Day, whose American films have always turned Sherlock’s stomach, actually has a sly and sexy singing voice, strong and tuneful, that does perfect justice to the song Greg's chosen. If only she were singing the Spanish original, as Greg does seem to be reacting too pointedly to the lyrics, from the opening line “You won’t admit you love me” to the refrain “Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.” Impressive that Greg manages to do the basic box step with an unexpected fluidity and comfort, particularly with a male partner.

The song is an incongruous choice for Greg, since neither of them has any amorous history with the other, but he seems to be determined to make Sherlock notice all the words. What _is_ Greg playing at?

Staring up at Sherlock now, Greg seems to smile as though proud of him for figuring something out. He murmurs, “Good man. Sometimes you just have to dare, don’t you? Sometimes you just have to take a chance.”

Sherlock’s eyes fly open, astonished. Is it Greg who’s figured something out?

* * *

Greg leads Sherlock off the dance floor and parks him with John, smiling broadly and pointedly at both. John looks fresh and eager for the dance he’s chosen. Sherlock feels suddenly flushed and uncertain: Greg seems to be nudging him to take a chance, and John’s chosen an exaggeratedly romantic number for them to dance to. Can it be that they’ve been closing in on each other, rather than Sherlock beguiling John to see what’s right in front of them? Has Sherlock been as blind as John?

He doesn’t really dare hope. The music begins with a high, sustained, tremolo in the violins: “The Very Thought of You.” John’s in his arms again, his smile restrained now, but his eyes as sparkling and happy as Sherlock ever remembers seeing. He takes John’s smaller hand in his own, and John grasps back more firmly and more fondly than before, and pulls him in closer for the slow swing. Sherlock’s heart begins to speed up, then to pound, and he can’t look away from John.

The only problem is that he can’t speak, either. He’s always used words to defuse tension that was building, to turn drama into comedy or at least irony, but now he can’t find a thing to say that could possibly normalise this tight embrace, these infatuated lyrics. The intensity of the contact makes him unable to do anything but stare at John; he can even feel his eyes widening. This helplessness isn’t projecting the image he’d been aiming for, with his evening of romantic dancing. His certainty seems to have warped into confusion, somehow.

But John is looking at him affectionately, unfazed by his sudden freeze, his deer-in-the-headlights stare. So Sherlock makes himself move, pick up the slow swing tempo, its gentle rhythm. This _is_ what he’s here for, after all: to hold John in his arms and make him understand, with tenderness, and visible desire, that they’re made for each other and it’s time they got on with it. Time to be brave, he tells himself. Time to be honest.

“John.” His voice is quiet and low, down in his deepest register. (It always seems to affect John, to brush him like a caress. Sherlock isn’t above using that to his advantage.) “You chose a wonderful song. I’ve always liked it.”

A delighted grin crinkles around John’s eyes as he looks up at Sherlock. “Really? Me too! Seems a bit fond and foolish for _you_ , though. I was sure you’d take the piss.”

He moves Sherlock backwards with unexpected assurance, his look half-laughing, half-challenging. Sherlock likes it when John leads, always has liked it when Captain Watson comes out from behind his mild and (reasonably) patient flatmate.

“Really, John. Ballroom dancing _depends_ on fond and foolish songs. Besides, this one is so over the top it’s almost a parody—‘I see your face in every flower,’ indeed.” He catches himself just before sniffing derisively.

“’Your eyes in stars above’”—John continues, and Sherlock knows, _knows_ , that John's remembering the first night they admired the night sky in London together. Feels with a shiver that John’s hand has at some point curled intimately around his own. Without him noticing—how was that even possible? John’s hand is caressing his, claiming it, not holding it like a dance partner. And all of Sherlock’s nerve endings are singing wherever his body is in contact with John, which by now is, ah, virtually knee to shoulder. His cheeks feel hot and he’s very much afraid his hands are going to go clammy at any moment now.

“It’s hot in here. Let’s finish the dance out on the balcony.”

John cocks an eyebrow, looking a challenge at him to admit that this—the song, the whole evening—was a pretext. Sherlock's ready to do so, but only once they're out of public view. He had needed, created, the screen of a crowd to draw John to him, but he’s damned if he’s going to have witnesses when John finally hears what he’s come here to tell him.

They glide over to the balcony doors and slip outside, leaving the door ajar, hearing the music muffled just enough for conversation. The late autumn night is cold and the shock of it draws them even closer together—and doesn't _that_ provide data for extrapolating sexual interest.

Sherlock’s heart is pounding, but John is looking up at the inky sky with its scattering of glittering stars. “Look at that, Sherlock!” His expression was so enchanted, so enchanting, that again Sherlock can’t look away.

“No, seriously, look at the stars!” John’s insistent voice breaks in on his thoughts. His eyes locked on John’s, Sherlock answers, “I am looking at them.”

At the utter sappiness of the line John stares, then smiles, leans up to kiss just the corner of Sherlock’s mouth. “You’re not fooling me anymore, you know. You’re a great softy.”

Sherlock, his head still bent down to John’s, smiles back. “Shh. Don’t tell. I’ve a reputation, and you’ll force me to do horrible things to maintain it, make Molly cry or something.”

The best thing about flirting with your best friend, Sherlock thinks, is that once you’re finally on the same page you can slow down, make jokes, keep the tension sizzling but on a low flame. He knows, and John knows, and nothing about the evening can go wrong now.

A clatter at the door and another couple comes out onto the balcony, apparently also to escape the warm ballroom. _Damn_. He frowns at the potentially distracting teal dress, form-fitting and slit up the side to mid-thigh, but John never gives her a glance. There's no longer any chance of private conversation, so he gestures John back inside. There's no hurry, now; it's just a matter of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUVT1NZtZPo  
> "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps," Doris Day
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75P3TrQsz0E  
> "The Very Thought of You," Natalie Cole


	11. For sentimental reasons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John is elated: watching and waiting, admiring and desiring. His breathing and heart rate haven’t calmed yet, though he’s been sitting for a few minutes now. Deep breath: hold: release, slowly. Repeat three times. The song draws to a close, the scarlet dress swings around and settles in a liquid fall, and Sherlock escorts her back to her table with an attentive gallantry that John knows to be wholly insincere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you don't want to see any naked dancing, read this chapter as though it were the last. Ch. 12 is going to shift the rating to Explicit, but I didn't want to tag the fic that way from the outset lest anyone be disappointed that the vast majority of it is decorous fluff

Sherlock has one more dance before the end, and John reluctantly relinquishes him, turning to the bar to get them each a of glass of _prosecco_ for afterward. He has to admit that Sherlock and his partner, a woman in red, make a dramatic pair: stark black and white against scarlet, her ash-blonde hair glowing in the dance-floor spotlights.

Apart from that (not trivial) matter of physical beauty, though, she isn’t in his league. Even John can see that Sherlock's had to do a couple of smooth saves to keep her on track and upright—a far cry from Donovan or Diana, who were able to make the most of his lithe, coordinated grace. But Sherlock is smiling down at her, not unkindly, as she does her best, and John suspects it's because he's in such a happy frame of mind that he can even be tolerant of uncertain steps. (He'd been patient with John's, after all.)

“You’ll Never Know Just How Much I Love You” had been a near-perfect choice for the uncertain partner in red: another slow swing with plenty of repetitions, plenty of time to pause and recover. What John likes best is that even taking care to keep his partner in line, Sherlock keeps glancing over at him, turning his partner to keep John in his line of sight, and smiling occasionally—at some line in the song? or is it just to say, _we’ll be dancing again soon_?

Whatever it means, John is elated: watching and waiting, admiring and desiring. His breathing and heart rate haven’t calmed yet, though he’s been sitting for a few minutes now. Deep breath: hold: release, slowly. Repeat three times. The song draws to a close, the scarlet dress swings around and settles in a liquid fall, and Sherlock escorts her back to her table with an attentive gallantry that John knows to be wholly insincere.

He catches John’s eye again and starts across the floor to his table. John thinks idly that he'd always thought of himself as a planet circling Sherlock’s star, or a moon circling Sherlock’s planet. It had sometimes made him savage, the way he felt like a secondary appendage locked into Sherlock’s trajectory. Now it seems as though they'd always been two satellites orbiting each other, swinging closer at some points and farther at others, now one dominant and now the other, impossible in astronomical terms but in emotional terms corresponding perfectly.

They're nearing perfect equilibrium now, he thinks. Both leading, both following, both pursuing and both being pursued. Whatever else happens, he thinks, he knows now that Sherlock has always cared, even when he tried to deny or disguise or defeat what he felt.

Sherlock is detained on his way over by a hand on his arm, a starry-eyed bearded man with a rather glaring wardrobe error Sherlock seems to be vigorously shaking his head “no” to. John gives a secret grin at the thought that Sherlock would dance with anyone wearing a floral Ascot with a tux, then shakes himself—he might be mocking another unexpectedly accomplished dancer. There's no way to find out, as Sherlock shakes his head again firmly, nods in John’s direction, and nearly bows in his haste to get away.

Once again, the scent of Sherlock hits John like a gut-punch: an intoxicating blend of his sweat and his shampoo that he recognises from his dancing nights. John almost sways toward him before he decides he can control this: pursing his lips and nodding at the seat across from him, pushing a glass of _prosecco_ his way. Sherlock gulps it gratefully and smiles, that gorgeous genuine smile that utterly changes him, makes him not just human but warm. It isn’t for everyone, that smile, but it's for John, and tonight only for John.

The emcee is chatting casually, a low-key kind of “let’s wrap it up, then” message: one more dance, she says, and then they’ll tally up the evening’s earnings and make a toast, to absent friends. John watches Sherlock rise and stand there, waiting for him to do the same. This time, the last dance—the surprise dance—he holds out his hand and clearly intends for them to walk to the floor hand-in-hand. And why not, thinks John. It’s as certain now as though they had already kissed, already made love, already talked everything out and rehashed it again after. It's clear to them at last, and it may as well be clear to everyone else too.

The dance floor is crowded this time, for the last number. When the emcee introduces the song John laughs out loud and looks up at Sherlock, who's looking quizzically down at him: “I Love You For Sentimental Reasons.”

“Seriously, Sherlock?”

“Why—not good?” He doesn’t look or sound worried, but the little wrinkle between his brows gives him away.

“Oh, no, no— _very_ good. Just: _sentimental_ reasons?” John makes his touches as reassuring as possible, clasping Sherlock’s waist and hand.

“I find I’ve become reconciled to _sentimental reasons_ , John. There’s something to be said for them. In limited doses, of course. Keep that to yourself too, please.”

They're dancing, not exactly in place but very nearly, given the press of couples on the floor. Molly and Greg, Donovan and Duncan, Diana and the lady in red, and dozens of other dancers, including some who only now feel emboldened to give it a go.

“Sherlock.” John makes his voice low and intense, for his partner’s ears alone.

“What?” Sherlock bends his head to hear him.

“I intend to keep that, and you, entirely to myself. You can be sure of it. Once we get out of here, and I get you home, you can turn off every electronic device in the flat because I am going to want your _full attention_.” John feels Sherlock shiver in his arms and almost miss a step.

“Yes, please,” is all he says, however. “Let’s go home.”

* * *

It isn’t as easy as that, of course. Sherlock has been too prominent in the proceedings to step off the dance floor in the middle of the last song. Once the music ends, too, the emcee’s cordial, discreet voice comes through the sound system to bring the evening to a ceremonial close.

“I want to thank everyone who participated this evening, everyone who bid and danced and encouraged the dancers. Many in fact who did not take to the floor still gave lavishly to the fund we are trying to build up. I can’t announce a final total, as there is still quite a queue at the bidding table; but provisionally, it appears that this evening you have donated a total of five _times_ the amount previously in the fund. This is going to allow us to do quite a bit.”

John grins at this last understatement, and feels again that surge of pride in his—what? in Sherlock, for having done something so wholly unexpected, and pulled it off so very well. Meanwhile the applause and whooping in the ballroom grow thunderous, and Sherlock leans over to whisper, “Let’s go while the going’s good.”

He's right, of course, any minute now the emcee will start thanking everyone by name from the Chief Constable to the DJ, and she will inevitably come round to Sherlock and Donovan. The only thing John can think of that Sherlock would dislike more than the clamour of two hundred people cheering and clapping, would be two hundred people cheering and clapping _at him_.

Besides, they've better things to be doing.

He takes Sherlock’s hand and again feels a wave of dizzy delight in doing this openly. Everyone around them on the edge of the dance floor is still caught up in the closing rituals of congratulations and thanks, and John tugs Sherlock away. Past brightly-coloured dresses and severe black dinner jackets, past weary wait staff with heavy trays of empty glasses, past the mirrored walls of the hall leading to the hotel lobby—and smack into Donovan, who’s clearly had the same idea of a timely escape.

She is slipping out alone, in a wrap of black velvet, and she gives them a smile and a decidedly knowing nod that may as well be a wink. The last they see of her is a flash of silver and gold as she climbs into the black cab, closing the door behind her as the driver pulls away from the kerb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZtWNlCTc6o  
> "You'll Never Know (Just How Much I Love You)," Vera Lynn
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1V7auwgpP0&list=PL42CFEF5AA9DE1043  
> "I Love You (For Sentimental Reasons"), Nat King Cole


	12. I can't help falling in love with you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John’s whispering. “Should’ve kissed you here that first night, should’ve snogged you senseless before ever we went up to find the flat invaded by Lestrade and his volunteers. Going to make up for that, every day of our lives. Now kiss me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the rating change to E. I am apparently incapable of a modest ellipsis and a "next morning over breakfast" kind of epilogue. Forgive me.

The cab behind Donovan’s pulls up to the kerb. Sherlock opens the door and holds it open, then climbs in after John. It isn't a question of manners; he wants John’s left hand within reach. Just in case he's ready.

Check the atmosphere: uncertain, at first. They're alone, but not really. Sherlock watches the passing lights strobe across the cab’s interior, across John’s face; he's looking away, out the window, his hands clasped loosely in his lap. But it's okay because they are alone, but not really. No more than John does Sherlock want their first real kiss to be in a taxicab, with a presiding spirit staring at them in the rear-view mirror, possibly disapproving.

He makes a show of turning off his mobile, then reaches for John’s hand, catches his little finger, and carries it to the seat between them. They’ll be home soon enough.

* * *

Indeed, sooner. They’re there in minutes, in front of the darkened flat, John paying off the cabbie while Sherlock unlocks the front door. His hand’s unsteady, and he thinks of the scratches he’s leaving on the keyhole as he carefully pushes the door open. Mrs Hudson’s windows too are dark; they have to be quiet.

John’s behind him, very close now, and Sherlock turns back to see him in the deep-sea light of the hall, and he knows: this is where it has to happen. Here, where it should have happened years ago, their first night.

John seems to think so too; they find each other’s hands in the dim midnight blue and push, pull each other to the wall, John’s back pressed against it, Sherlock flush against him and bending down.

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock freezes. Has he misconstrued?

“Come here, you berk. Kiss me. Right here.”

No misconstruction, then. What—? Not important. _Not important_. Ask later.

Leaning down again, Sherlock pauses a hairsbreadth from John’s face, his lips hovering at the corner of John’s mouth in a deliberate echo of that light kiss on the balcony. The clean, salty smell of John's skin and soap go to Sherlock’s head, and he breathes deeply to capture more of it. John turns and kisses him.

No polite press of a closed mouth this time: a commanding, demanding kiss that parts Sherlock’s lips so that John can stroke and chase Sherlock’s tongue. Nothing more than that slick, silky underside of John’s tongue as it keeps evading him brings Sherlock’s arousal to such a pitch that he pulls back; at that John surges forward and take his mouth decisively.

In response he groans more loudly than he intends to, and John chuckles at an effect he _clearly_ intended, then steps forward and reverses their positions so that the wall is at Sherlock’s back. John’s hands are at his waist and hip, his thigh neatly slotted between Sherlock’s. The rush of lust from cock up to belly is destabilising, and he’s unsteady on his feet, heart pounding and breath short.

John’s whispering. “Should’ve kissed you here that first night, should’ve snogged you senseless before ever we went up to find the flat invaded by Lestrade and his volunteers. Going to make up for that, every day of my life. Now kiss me.”

If Sherlock's had any illusions about being the motive force in this elaborately staged seduction they’re gone now, dissolved and discarded as John's hands slide up under the tailcoat and flatten out on his shoulder blades, holding him up and in place. For his part Sherlock can only hold on, clutching John and murmuring ( _actually it’s whimpering, isn’t it, admit it, you’re whimpering_ ) while John kisses him ruthlessly until he _is_ senseless, then says implacably, “ _Upstairs._ ”

Nothing about this seems familiar, Sherlock doesn’t recognise the smooth wood of the balustrade, doesn’t remember how many steps there are to the landing or how high, can’t recall ever having touched the wallpaper before. This isn’t Baker Street, this is a new world.

At the door of the flat now, with John tugging him inside, he realises he isn’t the one leading in this dance. And that’s fine. It’s all fine.

* * *

The door closes and Sherlock’s back hits the wall again, both impacts making a bit more noise than John would’ve liked, but needs must, he supposes. His hands land on Sherlock’s waist to steady them both, but he doesn’t squander the chance to explore, down Sherlock’s hips and back to his arse, just as lush as he’s always suspected. Pulling Sherlock to himself John whispers “Take it off, take it off, take it _off_ ,” louder each time until Sherlock’s tearing at his own lapels with more urgency than efficiency.

John laughs into his neck, pulls back a bit to give him room to maneuver, helps slide the tailored tailcoat off his shoulders. All evening he’s enjoyed touching its fine fabric, just now he’s _loved_ running his hands along the lining and feeling Sherlock’s finely muscled form beneath, but now he’ll be happy discarding it and not renewing the acquaintance for the next month at least. Still it’s a beautiful garment and he does owe it some gratitude, so he slows down to savour removing it.

No need to talk at all, really. They’re saying all they need to say without speaking, a wordlessness unlike their past guarded silences. Removing his own tuxedo jacket, John hangs it on the chair nearby and reaches his hands into Sherlock’s hair while Sherlock lunges for him, splays his hands on his lower back through the fine white shirt.

And they’re kissing again, still far too clothed, and from gentle and careful (unknot their ties, unbutton the waistcoat, stupid _shoes_ ) they become impatient and urgent. John slips a thumb into Sherlock’s mouth while lowering the zip of his trousers with his other hand to feel a desperately hard cock, irresistible and so, so responsive. Sherlock’s broken little moan when John's erection meets his own—that’s enough for John to check in.

“Is this—are you—okay? We can slow down, you know.”

The moan turns into an indignant near-squawk. “Oh, for God’s sake John, not again! I’ve had quite enough of slowing down, thank you very much. Put on some speed for a change, can’t you?”

At this imperious demand John laughs, and urgent moves past demanding and into rough. The _warmth_ of Sherlock, his scent of exertion, of arousal, has John almost helpless as he buries his nose in Sherlock’s chest.

“How d'you smell so good?”

“I don’t, I need a shower.” Suddenly Sherlock sounds self-conscious.

And that is wrong on just _so_ many levels.

“I’ll be the judge. Have you turned them off?”

“What?” Breathy and confused, now.

“Every mobile, tablet, and laptop.”

“When would I have done? We haven’t been apart since we walked in the street door.”

“So do it now. I don’t want any interruptions; I assume you don’t either.”

“Your dirty talk is making me weak in the knees, John.” Acerbic, but John knows that’s bravado.

“Oh, good. Won’t have to work at it, then.” He smiles against Sherlock’s kiss; the distinct change in tone hasn’t diminished the urgency at all.

Still, as Sherlock (just a little too flustered for dignity) makes the hurried round of electronic devices, John has time to reflect that they don’t have to stay stood up by the door to the hall. They have options. Several rooms, many pieces of furniture, scores of square metres to choose from. If he has any say in the matter they’re going to choose every single one, sooner or later. Starting with Sherlock’s bedroom, which this evening does not seem to be emitting any repelling vibrations _at all_.

* * *

Devices off. Clothing off. John’s clothing: also off. Horrid socks: all off. They’re finally in the bedroom and John’s fingertips, just barely rough enough to leave electric traces wherever he caresses Sherlock’s skin, raise gooseflesh on his flanks.

Sherlock’s been dreaming of this, fantasising about this, scheming for this for literal years, and at last, at long last, it’s happening. John betrays no anxiety, no second thoughts. Quite the contrary. In the half-dark his smile is all but predatory, his skin is gleaming, and eventually Sherlock remembers that he can touch John too.

And _oh_ , his head is swimming, his knees buckle at holding John’s trim hips, seeing John’s cock in straining eagerness, reaching out—touching it—and hearing John’s raucous moan. John is still leading, turning to pull Sherlock under him onto the bed. Sherlock feels winded, he hears himself panting and gasping, and he cannot get enough of John’s mouth, John’s tongue, John’s cock moving stiff and heavy along his own, over his bollocks. John’s wet them both with spit but it’s not enough, and Sherlock digs for the lubricant by the bed.

There. _There_. The too-dry tugging has become a slick glide, and the dizzying pleasure intensifies a hundredfold. How had he ever thought that he didn’t need this, need John; that this wanting was a defect—when it is expanding him beyond the borders of his own skin, his own mind.

It’s glorious, it’s over ridiculously fast, he should've tried to slow down but he’s been craving it for so long, they both have; they don’t last a minute before they are coming at almost the same time, with cries just as synchronised. John collapses on top of him but doesn’t stop kissing, his throat, his collarbones. Sherlock has the most absurd fear that John will taste tears.

For his part he keeps grazing John’s back, his shoulders and flanks, until John captures one of his hands and brings it to his mouth to kiss. Now both of them are sticky, and sweat-slick, and in need of a shower. _A good way to spend a refractory period_ , thinks Sherlock, both fastidious and efficient. And greedy: he wants to see John, to see all of him in the light.

John seems to have the same idea. He grins in the half darkness and shifts off of Sherlock to stand by the bed. Holds out his hand:

“May I have this dance?”

Sherlock is up at once, since the bed is now an odious and useless piece of furniture. John clasps his waist and his hand, pulls him in close.

“What are you doing?” Even Sherlock has had enough of dancing for one night, but John has not, seemingly.

“I want you to feel exactly what I was thinking during our last dance. I was thinking of dancing naked with you. ‘For sentimental reasons.’”

And he does, he dances Sherlock slowly across the bedroom floor, holds him tight. Sensation sings along Sherlock's nerves and skin as John does his best Elvis croons:

“Wise men say only fools rush in, but I can’t help falling in love with you.”

Sherlock could cry or laugh as John dances him into the bathroom and turns on the shower. While the water heats John scatters kisses all over, between the lines of his laughing serenade, and Sherlock thinks that all this, only twenty-four hours ago unthinkable, is now indispensable.

* * *

The thing about seeing Sherlock in the shower is that John knows this body so well already, yet it’s brand new to him. Familiar; foreign. He’s seen most of Sherlock; stitched, medicated, palpated, evaluated much of him; knows that physique better than most of his transitory lovers, and still finds him jaw-droppingly beautiful. And now the careful distance he’d always kept has vanished. He can reach out and touch, gaze and admire.

Sherlock seems to feel the same, staring and stroking John’s scarred shoulder and dimpled lower back, pectoral muscles and nipples. And rather endearingly, John’s cock comes in for a particularly intense study. Fair enough. He’s enjoying the view of Sherlock’s as well, half-hard again and flushed, he hopes not from too-dry friction.

Inside the tub they change places a few times, clumsily, to share the water, and bathe each other gently with soapy flannels. Sherlock insists on washing his hair and then John’s, and it’s both unbearably erotic and unbearably tender. John's thinking what it will look like by morning, a cloud of wild fluff to make Sherlock look his most boyish and unguarded.

He steps out of the tub and takes Sherlock’s fresh towel. Begins to dry him, slowly, delicately: his square shoulders, the pale expanse of his chest, his long fingers and the webbing between them. His long, strong thighs, his arse, oh lord, that crowning glory, so unexpected in a frame otherwise so ... ectomorphic. It isn’t only Sherlock who’s half-hard now.

Sherlock’s standing stock still, apparently mesmerised by the careful, slow stimulation. His breath is coming more quickly again, his chest is flushed, nipples erect. John is fascinated by what he sees and senses, can almost feel it as if he were Sherlock, a strange feedback loop in which he both creates and experiences the same stimulus.

He kneels and dries Sherlock’s ankles, lifting first one foot and then the other, taking his time because the view from here is really quite breathtaking. The soft skin over what’s sure to be an achingly hard erection. The elegant tracery of blood vessels just beneath the taut, shiny skin. He presses a kiss into each inner thigh, and Sherlock suddenly comes to life, tugging at John to bring him to standing, hauling him still damp back into the bedroom, onto the bed.

This time it’s John who’s flat on his back as Sherlock explores him all over with hands and lips and tongue, with excruciating slowness. His suspicion that Sherlock is a right bastard is confirmed when time and time again John asks him for more, faster, harder, and Sherlock responds by pulling back, slowing down, easing up on the pressure. This isn’t a race, lord knows, and the first time had gone too fast, but Sherlock is taking the piss, and it’s only their second time.

But Sherlock isn’t taking the piss, suddenly he’s right where John has been aching to be touched, and his ridiculously beautiful lips are opening to take him in, a millimeter at a time for fuck’s sake. And John is going to burst a blood vessel if Sherlock doesn’t stop teasing him and start getting serious about giving his cock some needed friction, some speed, some _urgency_.

Well, apparently it’s going to be a burst blood vessel, because Sherlock—and where did he learn _that_ , John would like to know?—appears to be a master of the slow burn. He escalates in microscopic increments and already John can’t breathe, can’t reach out a hand to caress or guide Sherlock, can’t think of anything except the kaleidoscopic patterns of sensation erupting over his skin.

When he thinks he will actually shatter if he doesn’t come, and his cries reach a pitch of unmistakable desperation, Sherlock finally, finally sets to with a will and John is suddenly coming—convulsing and groaning in both ecstasy and sheer relief as Sherlock’s hands on his arse pull him, over and over, into his mouth.

* * *

Sherlock wakes up with John’s fingers laced in his own. The bedsheets are an absolute shambles, twisted and pulled free, the covers turned round at a ninety-degree angle, wretchedly uncomfortable. He’s never been happier in his life.

John in profile is smiling faintly, not in the least awake. Not even close. What smile is that, anyway? Gloating? Reminiscent? Satisfied? Anticipatory?

He remembers their slow dance to the shower. The awkward, tender dance _under_ the shower. The “olde daunce” after the shower, the tempo so _lento_ he could swear he'd felt John’s tortured bliss in his own body, at the cellular level. When John had recovered himself a bit, returned to himself, he’d turned to Sherlock with a look of clear intent. Hauled him up by his shoulders, literally lifted him to lay him down and pay him in the same unhurried, electrifying coin.

He can no longer ignore that he needs the loo, so unwinds himself from John’s grasp. Afterwards he makes for the kitchen, still replaying the events of the night. (The evening leading up to it had sunk without trace in the intensity of making love to John, with John.) He plugs in the kettle; no matter what John says, he makes better tea, and will bring some to the bedroom to prove it. While the water heats he finally wakes up his phone, takes it off airplane mode and checks the messages.

A series of texts. Dozens. From Molly. _How had they slipped away? What had they got up to?_ 😉 (He’d have a word with Molly about winky-face emojis.) From Lestrade. _Where had they gone? Everyone had been disappointed he hadn’t stayed to be thanked!!_ (He’d have a word with Lestrade about exclamation points.) From Dimmock, Diana, Charlotte Gordon. From unknown numbers, most of which he skips. (He’d have a word with _everyone_ about sharing around his mobile number.)

From Mycroft, even, an uninterpretable _Congratulations, well done_. Sarcasm? Condescension? A coarse reference to finally seducing John? (Being seduced by John?)

From Sally. Three in a row.

_— So, how’d that work out? SD_

_— L-O-V-E, I mean. Fingers crossed. Or something. SD_

_— Thanks for last night, and all the prep. You gave me back something I'd lost. I didn’t even know how much I’d been missing it. When he can spare you, I’m ready to dance when you are. SD_

He’s still reading through gushing messages from unknown numbers when John, barefoot and ruffled and looking thoroughly contented, wanders into the kitchen. He raises his eyebrows at the mobile in Sherlock’s hand.

“Messages about last night. It went well.”

Unexpectedly John heads straight for Sherlock and backs him up against the counter, wraps his arms around his waist.

“I’ll say it went well.”

“Dimmock suggested I get started planning next year’s event. With dance lessons beforehand, says Charlotte Gordon. Unlikely.” He can’t spare too much thought for anything but John’s forehead on his shoulder and John's hands on his arse.

“Oh, I don’t know. You enjoyed it, I saw you.” John’s voice is muffled in Sherlock’s deltoid muscle.

“Well, yes, I love to dance. I’ve always loved it.” But that’s no reason to subject himself to another two months of organisation, anxiety, rehearsal, and ... _people_.

“It loves you, too. You were the most gorgeous thing on the floor.” The proximity of John, and the dearth of substantial layers between them, are far more interesting than this post-mortem of the dance the evening before, a million years ago.

And now on top of it all John is kissing his neck. His adam’s apple. His jawbone. With a bit of teeth.

“Hmm.” Oh, not good, he’s losing his words.

“And it certainly worked out well for ... us.” John isn’t losing his. He can kiss and talk at the same time. Perhaps a matter of practice.

“Um-hmmm.” Yep. Words all gone.

“So I vote you do it again. On one condition, obviously.”

“Hmmmmmm?” This is humiliating. He may never again be able to speak while John is kissing his throat like this.

“Dance with me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to every one of you reading this, for going dancing with Sally and the boys. Thank you for sharing my love for the music they danced to—give me your favorite songs and versions of them, and I'll be forever in your debt. 
> 
> Thanks to the workshopping members of the 2019 Fic Writers’ Retreat, who told me that this fic should not be just Sherlock’s POV. They were so right; it was much more fun like this, at least for me. 
> 
> Thanks especially to everyone who's commented: comments are the most encouraging form of (verbal) response I know of, whether emojis or expletives or excerpts or full-on encomia. They make me live. Even more, they show me things about the fic I was barely aware of: y'all are fantastic readers. 
> 
> Thanks to the two artists who gave this fic the beauty of their work, beyond my wildest dreams. Khorazir and bluebellofbakerstreet, you lifted my spirits and my heart with your inspired renditions of Sally and Sherlock's show dance and I _love_ you for it. Images are up now, following Chapter 7. ❤️
> 
> What inspired this fic is a combination of the Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong duet CD, and this dress from a random online catalogue (the artists made it better though): 
> 
> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/184881477@N07/49552433658/in/dateposted-public/)  
> 


	13. Overjoyed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the first Met Gala fundraiser-cum-matchmaker, Sally has a plan to woo her crush at the second one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to post this on Valentine's Day but am feeling heartbroken, so have decided to post a day early.

It was eight months after the unforgettable Met Gala fundraiser, where I came back to dancing in public after years of pretending I didn’t miss it. Eight months since Sherlock Holmes and I came out as dance partners; since the amount we raised came out to be five times the amount in the fund; and since John Watson came out—to himself, I think, as much as to anyone else.

Everyone seemed to leave that evening with a partner. Everyone but me.

It wasn’t for lack of opportunity. Our show dance knocked everyone on their arse, and men who’d never given me a second glance were practically starstruck when they talked to me. But they were no temptation. On the contrary. Pasty-faced Londoners too nervous even to flirt properly? _Please_. Maybe another year.

But as it turned out, Holmes had no intention _at all_ of ever organising another Met Gala. His first was going to be his last, he said. Too time-consuming, stressful, and complicated. He’d got what he’d been aiming for, and saw no reason for a repeat performance. But I did.

His reluctance was a problem. Unlike him I have a fulltime job, and couldn’t add event-planning to it. I had other reasons too for not wanting to be the mover and shaker. Well, off the dance floor, anyway. Couldn’t think of any other Met officers in a position to do it, either. Besides, it’d been a howling success when Holmes did it, and who was I to argue with success?

* * *

Holmes and I got together occasionally to dance; tried to set up a semi-schedule, but one of us was always busy on a case. Eventually he just said, “let’s text when we see a window, and try for every second and fourth Thursday. I do want to get our _paso doble_ ironed out.”

He’s competent at most dance styles, but ballet and ballroom are his forte. His reserve never melts enough for some of the more popular, or ethnic, or (ahem) _youthful_ moves, and I know now that he hates to look ridiculous. Hates it more than physical pain. (Which is weird when you think about it; you can always revise someone’s opinion of you, but you can’t retroactively remove pain.)

But he made a good partner, loads more supportive and less peacocky than I’d ever have imagined. He was genuinely chuffed when he could make me look good, or fantastic, and what woman doesn’t love having a partner she can totally trust? Not that trust came easily to either of us. But once we started dancing, it came—sorry, sorry— _step by step_.

Got so I actually smiled when I got a text from him. When I saw him at work, with a completely new understanding with John. Not sure everyone clocked _that_ , but Lestrade and I exchanged stonily neutral glances as we tried not to smile.

And then I fell in love.

Holmes clocked _that_ immediately, damn him, and the object of my affection wasn’t even on the scene. He looked me up and down and said under his breath, “Eye make-up, Sally? And those stockings? Who is it? You didn’t dress up for the victim.”

I huffed in annoyance. “I was getting ready for a date.” I hadn’t been; I’d just been trying out a look.

And there it was. My 600th patented Holmes eyeroll. I should be given some kind of medal to mark the occasion. “ _Obviously_. Who with?”

“Tell you next time. If we can get this enquiry underway I might still salvage something of the evening, yeah?”

He wasn’t listening anymore, he was already in it up the elbows, annoying the Scene of Crimes officers and entertaining John Watson mightily. I had to admit, he could be fun, in his own weird way.

* * *

He was gorgeous, August was. Is. August: what a name. But warm, like him, and sunny, like him. He’d a blinding smile that made everyone think he was ecstatic to see them, but he wasn’t putting it on. I’d seen him grinning over a computer screen or newspaper in the exact same way. He just loved—living.

He was tall and muscled; first time he helped me up at a crime scene it was like I weighed nothing at all. Much more solid than my dance partner, and a lively stare, so much warmer than Holmes’. Well, Watson seemed satisfied with his man, but August was much more appealing, and infinitely more sexy.

And completely out of reach. He wasn’t _with_ anyone, I’d found out that much. And he liked working with me, liked my company. He just wasn’t interested. I was used to dodging unwanted overtures, not so used to my own being unwanted. If I suggested coffee or even ten minutes’ break for a sandwich he put me off, with a tiny—not a chill, exactly, but withdrawal. “Nah, you’re all right,” he’d say.

But I wasn’t. Not by a long shot. I was head over heels, and completely off balance.

* * *

When the anniversary of the attack came round, in mid-September, I tried not to notice. I didn’t have much memory of it, after all. The perp was behind bars. I shouldn’t make a thing of it. It was a Sunday and I gave myself a good lie-in, daydreamed about August, got up in disgust and showered.

The doorbell was ringing when I finished, but had stopped by the time I shrugged into a bathrobe and pulled the door open. No one was there, but a floral delivery the size of a very large dog was sitting in the corridor. It couldn’t be—

No. No, it absolutely couldn’t. Greg, maybe. Nobody in my family, for sure. I brought the armful of flowers inside and set to probing through them for a card. They were extravagant, over the top, a rainbow of colours and shapes and textures, lilies (unscented, thank _gods_ ) and roses and lots of blooms I’d no name for. No card.

–Oh, yes, of course there was: stapled to the paper around the flowers. I took it out: just _SH_.

This, from the man I’d hated for so long. He’d softened over the past months of being with John.

The flowers went wobbly and blurry and I buried my face in them. Damn it. Damn him, making me cry. Meant to text a simple “thanks” but the day got away from me.

A couple of days later, though, squatting over a body in the Green Park, I saw Holmes arrive with his doctor. Mouthed an exaggerated “thank you” and smiled; he nodded, and didn’t.

* * *

After the nineteenth gentle snub from August, I cornered Holmes the next time we met to dance. We’d worked out a sequence of knockout moves for an Argentine tango, and it was starting to come together.

It told a simple story. Basically a series of advances (him) and retreats (me), with his hands trying to grip me and me slipping away in ingenious ways. It culminated in a surprise lift, his hands on the small of my back and my waist, hoisting me head over heels onto his right shoulder as though he’d caught me at last.

Making it look effortless took a lot of effort. We were sweaty, and tired, and had sniped at each other a good bit. But it was looking good, and we were chuffed—even him. I figured it was a good time to ask.

“What was your plan?”

“Sorry?” Oh, right. It was a complete non sequitur for him.

“Last year, when you organised the Gala. It was all about John, I know that. But what _exactly_ was your plan? It seems to have worked, whatever it was.”

“You were there. You saw.” He frowned, as if I were being dim.

“Just—wow him with your dancing? Woo him with meaningful glances across a crowded room? Worry him with the possibility of a rival?”

“Body language shouldn’t be a totally unfamiliar concept to you, Sally— _Sergeant_. Did you just _waggle your eyebrows_ at me?”

Ooh, _Sergeant_. I’d hit a nerve. A mate would’ve swatted my arm in annoyance; Holmes always went straight in with a verbal attack. I just tipped my head to demand an answer.

“Why are you asking now?” Irritation fading into curiosity.

“Just curious.” My offhand tone wasn’t convincing even me, let alone Holmes.

“Not sure I had _that_ part of it planned out in detail. There were so many other details to organise, I just piled on the romantic songs and hoped for the best.”

That admission had to hurt—both the romantic bit, and the chance bit. I didn’t twit him about it.

“But you’re going to do it again.” I said it briskly, as though it were a settled thing.

“Oh, _God_ , no.”

“Yes, you are.” I kept my voice even, with just a hint of steel.

“Are you asking me, or telling me?” His tone was guarded.

“Telling you. Why else’re we working so hard on this tango?”

A beat of silence.

“Why should I?”

“It’s important,” I said, firmly. Never overexplain, not with Holmes. “By the way, you should shift your weight to your back foot just there.”

“Ah. Am I to understand that _you_ ... need a plan?” And there it was: the musing voice of a man who likes a challenge.

“Might do.”

“Do I know them?”

I stopped short and glared. “You expect me to believe you don’t already know who it is?”

He did a funny kind of half-circle twirl, kind of a full-body eyeroll. “Sally. I only see you one on one, dancing, or in a crowd at crime scenes. At the latter we’re both focused on _the crime_. At the former—well, if it’s me, you’re out of luck.”

I froze and started laughing. Then the full horror of the idea hit me and I totally lost it, whooping and guffawing and bent double holding my sides while he seesawed between pretending to be offended, and reluctantly giggling. (Yes. Giggling.) Finally I got a grip and we got back to our practice.

With anyone else that’d have been a bonding moment that ended with a hug. Us—we only ever touched while dancing, and that was bonding enough. But I’d a feeling he was going to do it for me, that I didn’t have to insist. Or beg.

* * *

Three weeks later the flyers and posters were already out at the Met, and the second Gala was _on_. Charlotte Gordon arranged a weekly dance lesson at her local studio—low pressure, modest cost. Two PCs offered to do themed table decorations, which struck me as overkill, but they were so eager. Now that the event wasn’t an unknown anymore, Holmes’ assistants decided to organise an online signup in advance.

All in all it was more like a group effort this time, which was all to the good: more buy-in, more enthusiasm; more likely that August would come, and that everyone would donate.

Holmes and I exchanged music prompts by text, and we got a few shy requests too.

He could be surprisingly stuffy. (Well, not so surprising.) But he asked which song was for “my plan,” by which he meant “my man.” (I didn’t have either.) I wouldn’t tell him which song it was, and I placed my bid on August anonymously. I’d outbid anyone I had to, too.

But meantime I backed off, treated August like all my other colleagues. This was a long game: it had to be an offer, an invitation, not a persecution, if it was to have any chance of succeeding.

It was still two months out when Holmes told me that Watson was doing some of the dance lessons. His face went soft when he said it.

“And you told him he didn’t need to be a better dancer to keep your attention.” I didn’t mean it, though. If Holmes was even capable of uttering words like that, he’d never admit it to me.

“Nothing of the sort. He’s keeping it secret.”

I stopped dead and he tripped over my right foot, which was fair, as that foot wasn’t supposed to be there anymore.

“For God’s _sake_ , Donovan—!”

My voice was unsteady. “He’s keeping it secret.”

Suppressed laughter is infectious, it turns out. He caught my eye and said, just as unsteadily, “Yes.”

“From _you_.”

“From me.”

From the man who can detect a blow job twenty hours after the fact from the state of my knees. (I didn’t say that, though. He still winces at it. I save it for when he’s been a shit and needs taking down a peg.)

“So on Thursday evenings he just comes home late and sweaty?”

“Oh, no. He comes home late and freshly showered. And humming.” Holmes’s self-possession was starting to crack.

“Oh, right, well, _that’s_ not suspicious, _at all_.”

At that Holmes lost it too, laughing uproariously, not unkindly, at his—whatever John was to him. His everything.

* * *

Between murders, enquiries, and paperwork, the weeks sped by. Oh, and also dancing, and hunting down a dress that didn’t cost a month’s salary. It had to be another knockout, and I half-wished I could just wear last year’s—August hadn’t seen it, after all.

But that wouldn’t do; half of my seduction plan turned on dazzling the whole room, not just August. Nothing turned uncertainty into fascination faster than seeing a couple of hundred people gaping in admiration—Holmes had been counting on that the first time, and now so was I.

I finally found the dress, and had it tailored just a bit for flexibility (and for modesty—that lift!). The bodice was ivory velvet, the skirt ivory damask with tiny gold stars hand-embroidered down one side and along the hem, like a playful galaxy. The shoulder straps were metallic gold, so I had fine gold cord twisted through my hair, and if I say so myself I came up with a stunning gold-and-ivory design for my eye makeup.

I expected the night itself to be tense, without even the novelty of the first time to make it fun. But it was magical even before August turned up.

The venue had a younger look, but still warm and welcoming: flashier colours, but white fairy lights. There was a wider range of music, but still plenty of chances for the uncertain to enjoy dancing. The advance signup online got more people involved, gave them time to prepare, and made the bidding more competitive. People could still bid at the Gala, which looked like raising _much_ more than the first. And that, romantic aspirations aside, was the point of the whole do.

Between advance sign-ups and advance drink orders there weren’t long queues at the bidding tables or at the bar, so everyone was nicely lubricated and disinhibited when the emcee got on the mike. At that point Holmes and I stopped peeping through the curtains and made an entrance with just a bit of flamboyance to it. I looked around casually for August, and sure enough there he was, looking like a young Forrest Whittaker and making my heart pound out of my chest.

Holmes and I separated for the first dance. And with so many anonymous sign-ups, who knew who my first partner would be?

Knock me down with a feather: John Watson.

“Did he put you up to this?” I demanded, as we started a sweet, slow “I Only Have Eyes For You” on the _very_ crowded dance floor. For Watson, of course, there was only one “he.”

“Oh, no, I just wanted to bid on you before I got too intimidated by your show dance.”

“Intimidated—? Dunno what you’ve been doing, John, but you’re much more confident than last year. The very opposite of intimidated.”

There. He looked gratified, as I meant him to.

“Sally, I didn’t think it was possible, but you’re even more gorgeous than last year. Sherlock said I’d be bowled over, and he was right.”

I always forgot how much easier it was to talk with John than with his man. I’d paid him a compliment, he paid one back, it was natural. Holmes would’ve stuck to the literal truth, and probably gone on to critique the one hair that wasn’t in place.

Oh, well. Didn’t matter. Holmes had been there when I’d needed him, after all. Can’t expect more or different than people can give.

We didn’t talk much more than that; John was checking on his feet, a bit, and I was getting ready for the show tango. Which was going to go brilliantly, as long as Holmes remembered not to let my skirt flip up on the lift. (Just in case he did, I was armed with lethally sexy lingerie so at least it would look deliberate.)

Lestrade had won my second dance, and he was in very good spirits, spinning me once and then again, looking to Dr Hooper to see if she was impressed. I warned him I was going to dance with her later in the evening, she looked so irresistibly sweet. He was so gone on her, it was endearing. Lady Gaga stopped singing, and I made for the loo.

 _Okay_. A few minutes’ break, back into the ballroom, and then: our tango. This year everyone knew what would happen and didn’t even start off on the floor with us: it was pure performance. The energy in the room was amazing, fizzing, and the snap and thrust of the music focused all eyes on us.

Well, it wasn’t competition-level dancing, but we did well, and we had fun, and we set a bar that relaxed everyone else—win win win, in other words. And Holmes, reluctant though he was to even brush my bum, managed to keep my skirt in place, so I didn’t have to show off the goods to the whole room. When we danced I could see something in him he didn’t share anywhere else, something that made John’s devotion make sense. It was good to have him as an accomplice rather than an enemy, for sure.

The clapping and cheering went on forever. It wasn’t an athletic dance but I was still breathless at the end of it, and the roar of applause let me calm my breathing and look round for my usual target. Who was right there, staring at me. With stars in his eyes. _Success_. The concentrated, universal admiration would make August sit up and take notice instead of repeating “Nah, you’re fine.”

A few numbers went by and August danced them with anyone and everyone, but kept his eye on me. My number was coming up: I’d had to outbid quite a few others, but I was going to woo and win August in three minutes and forty-two seconds of Stevie Wonder’s “Overjoyed” or die in the attempt. It wasn’t ballroom, and going by what I’d seen we were going to dance it together _very_ well.

* * *

And that’s all it took, really. A romantic evening, romantic songs, a spotlight of dance magic, and my heart in my eyes. Oh, and body language, as Holmes had said. I didn’t go home alone; August tucked my frothy, starry skirt into the cab behind me as though I were the Queen and climbed in after me.

But we didn’t do anything, not that night. He wasn’t in it for a quick shag. He wanted us to get to know each other, he said. He wanted to impress me ( _yeah, right, start impressing me, —okay, you’ve done it_ ). I loved that idea, having thought I’d have to work hard to win him.

Weeks later I found out who’d taken him aside and told him he was an idiot if he didn’t give me a chance. Belt and braces, I suppose. It’s always good to have backup.

Last year when Holmes had done me the service of a lifetime, I’d resented having to be grateful to him. Not this year. No, this year I sent him a floral arrangement the size of a very large dog.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A year ago today I posted the last chapter of this fic, but promised to return with an epilogue. To everyone who's read and / or boosted this fic, to Khorazir and Bluebellofbakerstreet who _illustrated_ it, to RadioBob214 who made a playlist for it, and to everyone who left a comment--may you find diamonds on the souls of your (dancing) shoes!

**Author's Note:**

> RadioBob214 made a playlist for this fic! ALL HAIL!!   
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/52b8rtP4dSIFcUAIHvIWcy?si=wKnD7ZnfQImkVHp_RIXMwg

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * A [Restricted Work] by [bluebellofbakerstreet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebellofbakerstreet/pseuds/bluebellofbakerstreet) Log in to view. 




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